


Life Is Strange

by firesonic152



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Mild Gore, Mind Manipulation, Pining, Suicidal Themes, Temporary Amnesia, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-10-29 21:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10862160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firesonic152/pseuds/firesonic152
Summary: Time travel. It was the most harebrained idea Winston had ever come up with, but even he had to admit it was probably their only option.This is a terrible plan, he mused.An ill-fated trip to the past leaves Gabriel pining for a man that no longer exists.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PHEW I've been working on this fic since December! Really excited to share it with you all at last!!
> 
> Also, all I listened to while writing this fic was NateWantsToBattle's album Sandcastle Kingdoms and Eyeshine's Gone Tomorrow album. If you like to listen to music while reading fics, I highly recommend :)

_Soldier 76 adjusted his grip on his pulse rifle, squinting as if it would help his tactical visor focus any faster._

_His target was a young kid with blond hair and stars in his eyes, twenty-one years old and ready to take on the world. The kid was laughing, jabbing at his friend with his elbow, apparently free of cares and worry._

_Soldier didn’t feel a thing. He shifted his finger on the trigger, waiting for the friend to leave. He didn’t want any witnesses._

_Finally, the kid waved and turned to go. The friend called out one last playful insult before scampering away. The kid was still chuckling to himself, grinning at the open air. He believed the world was at his feet. He believed he had a bright future ahead of him, opportunity, that he would make history._

_Soldier waited for his visor to make some final calibrations, aimed his rifle the slightest bit higher, and pulled the trigger._

 

* * *

 

The Watchpoint was unusually rowdy. All ongoing missions had been cancelled, and all agents immediately recalled to base. While there were agents stationed at the point at all times, normally there was always at least one team out in the field. It was highly uncommon for every single member of Overwatch to be home at once.

They all gathered in the main conference room, exchanging nervous glances and shrugs. Nobody officially knew what was going on but there were always rumors, and in such a small, tight-knit group, word traveled quickly.

Winston sat at the head of the table and pushed up his glasses before clearing his throat, signaling the start of the meeting.

“I’m sure you all more or less already know why you’ve been recalled,” he began. He took off his glasses and cleaned them, a nervous habit. “But, for the sake of clearing up any miscommunications, here is what’s happened.” He put his glasses back on and glanced at his notes. “Our respawn tech has stopped working.”

Dead silence. Winston, seeming to sense the discomfort in the room, took off his glasses so he could fidget with them.

“Though we are able to carry portable respawn machines to on-site mission locations, these handheld devices are remotely controlled and powered by a mainframe here at the Watchpoint,” he continued. “If the mainframe goes down, the entire system shuts off.”

“And that is what happened?” Genji asked.

Winston nodded. “Without our respawn tech, we cannot safely send agents into the field. So, until we can get it fixed, we’re grounded.”

“How long?” Mei piped up.

Winston glanced at Torbjörn. “Well, we… we don’t know.”

This prompted a flurry of whispers around the room. Winston put on his glasses once again and raised his hands for silence.

“This tech was first developed by the original Overwatch,” he explained. “Obviously, it was – is – extremely powerful technology. Extremely _dangerous_ , in the wrong hands. Only two mainframes were ever made, the second being the one stationed here and the first…” He hesitated. “The first was in Switzerland. It was lost in the… in the explosion.” He pushed up his glasses with a knuckle. “Research on this was one of Overwatch’s most closely guarded secrets, to the point where all information was stored on old-fashioned external hard drives and paper kept in the Switzerland headquarters. The only way to access it was to steal the physical drives and notebooks. It was a safety measure against hacking, but unfortunately it also means that everything is gone.” He sighed. “In other words, we have no idea how to fix our machine.”

McCree whistled. “Well ain’t this a pickle.”

“Did Overwatch not function perfectly well without this technology in the past?” Hanzo huffed, arms folded over his chest.

“Indeed,” Zarya agreed. “We can survive.”

“Yes,” replied Winston slowly, “but we lost a lot more people. And with our numbers so few right now, we can’t afford to send agents out without it.”

“What’s the plan, then?” Lena’s head was cocked to the side, her expression far too smiley for the occasion. “You’ve got one, don’tcha?”

Her good cheer was infectious. Winston smiled in response and nodded. “Yes. Actually, your chronal accelerator is a huge part of this.” He placed a capsule about the size of a fist on the table. “This is a time traveling device. It is an extrapolation on Lena’s accelerator, and I was able to-“

“What’s the plan?” Fareeha cut him off before he could launch into a full scientific explanation.

Winston, a little embarrassed, coughed awkwardly and nodded. “Yes. Right. Well, the plan is for someone to use this device to travel back in time to the old Swiss headquarters in 2046, find the information we need to fix our respawn mainframe without alerting anyone to your presence, and come back.”

Angela’s face was in her hands. “This is the most illegal thing I have ever heard.”

McCree nudged her, grinning. “This ain’t exactly a legal operation to begin with, sweetheart.”

“Who’s going?” asked Hana.

“I’m the time travel expert,” Lena said, standing up. “Obviously-“

“Not you,” Winston interrupted. “It’s far too dangerous for you, specifically. Your chronal accelerator could be disrupted and we could lose you forever.”  
“Oh.” She sat down, pouting. “All right then.”

“It has to be someone who won’t be recognized in the past so as to avoid temporal disturbances, as well as someone who is able to sneak past any security and is competent with the hard drives,” Winston continued.

“Sounds like a job for that Talon lady, uh… Sombra,” Lúcio said.

“Yes, well, for obvious reasons we can’t ask her,” Winston replied. “Satya, you’re the most apt for this job, if you’ll take it.”

Satya nodded. “Of course. I-“

“Hold on.”

All eyes turned to Soldier 76, who had been silent up to that point.

“I should go.” He was doing his best to contain his annoyance, but it was seeping into his gruff voice anyway.

“No,” said Winston immediately. “No, Jack. You’ll be recognized. And if you meet yourself-“

“I won’t be recognized.” Soldier pointed to his visor. “None of _you_ recognized me. As long as I keep the mask on, it’s fine.”

“But-“

“Winston.” His tone did not invite argument. “I was Strike Commander. I know any and all passcodes. I have the right fingerprints and DNA for scanners. I still remember the security schedules. I know every inch of the building, and exactly where I’m going.” His expression was hidden behind his mask, but it wasn’t hard to tell that he was glaring. “It has to be me.”

“He’s got you there, my friend,” Reinhardt chuckled.

“This is a terrible plan,” Winston grumbled, stress-cleaning his glasses again. He returned them to his face. “Fine,” he relented. “Get in, get out. Do _not_ _change anything_.”

Soldier nodded. “I read you.”

 

* * *

 

“This is a _terrible_ plan,” Winston said again, frowning as he handed Soldier 76 the time capsule.

The time capsule could travel through time, but not space; the device had to be operated on-location. Winston, Soldier, Angela, and Torbjörn had all flown to the site of the former Overwatch headquarters in Zurich. The rubble had been cleared and in its place a monument erected in honor of those who had lost their lives. They had even rebuilt the huge statue of Strike Commander Morrison, which Soldier eyed with distaste.

“It was a waste of the goddamn budget the first time they built it,” he scoffed. “And I’m the only one who got a statue, of course, like I was worth more than anybody else who died here. It barely even looks like me anyway.”

Angela laid a comforting hand on his back. “Then don’t think of it as a statue of you. Think of it as a statue symbolizing the ideals that Overwatch stands for: courage, bravery, equality, love, protection. Standing for what you believe in.”

Soldier shook her off, hands clenched into fists. “I didn’t symbolize any of that.”

“Enough self-pity,” Torbjörn cut in. “The time capsule’s been pre-calibrated to send you to the right times, so you don’t have to worry about messing with it.” _Don’t mess with it_ , was the unspoken threat. He held out two faintly glowing orbs. “These are the cores. One’s already been inserted into the capsule. It uses up one core per time trip. These things are hell to make, so we only have two more.” He was glowering. “You’d better only need one more to get back, but you’ll have an extra just in case.”

Soldier took them and placed them safely in one of his holsters. Winston, Tobjörn, and Angela stepped back.

“This is a terrible plan,” Winston bemoaned yet again.

“Good luck!” Angela said, her smile a little more strained than usual. “Safe travels.”

Soldier nodded his thanks and placed the time capsule on the ground. Small legs and a projector extended out from the device, much in the same way his biotic field emitter did. He tapped the button and waited for it to power up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you read, please remember that Gabriel is a bit of an unreliable narrator in some respects!
> 
> Also, update as of July 4th, 2017: THIS FIC NOW HAS FANART!! Linked at the end because of spoilers for this chapter<3

Reaper watched all the strangers milling about the square with disinterest. He had melted into the shadows of a building across the street from the Zurich Overwatch monument and was waiting for the target to show. He sought out the clock set in the center of the plaza for the hundredth time and shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

His target sure was taking its sweet time, and wasting his. He could only stay semi-corporeal for so long; the nanites that made up his body didn’t take too well to the precarious in-between phase, preferring to either disintegrate entirely or form up. Unfortunately, neither of those final states were suited for stealth. His fog state meant losing most of his sensory organs, so he couldn’t see or hear, while his fully corporeal form drew too much attention.

So, until he was finally called into action, he was stuck as the equivalent of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The Leaning Tower, according to recent news reports, was collapsing slowly under its own asymmetrical weight and would apparently tip over some time in the next five years. _I’ll be collapsing some time in the next five minutes if they don’t show up_ , Reaper thought, annoyed.

As soon as all Overwatch agents had been suddenly called back to the Watchpoint in Gibraltar, Talon had taken notice. It was unusual for Overwatch to halt mid-mission at all, let alone cancel _every_ pending assignment until further notice. It hadn’t taken long for Sombra to hack into Winston’s private communication channels and discover a well-hidden series of messages between him and Torbjörn regarding the state of their respawn technology. They had discussed a long series of increasingly far-fetched fixes until landing on time travel as their only option.

 _Time travel_. Reaper shook his semi-formed head. It was the most harebrained idea Winston had ever come up with, but even he had to admit it was probably the only way to recover the lost respawn research without having to conduct a new series of horribly morally-incorrect experiments. Still, Reaper would have placed “redo morally-incorrect experiments for lifesaving research” above _time travel_ , of all things, as his preferred plan of action. But Winston was a goody-two-shoes – always had been – and he didn’t want the “new Overwatch repeating the mistakes of its past.” _Or something_.

In any case, it was in Talon’s best interest if Overwatch never recovered its respawn technology. It was in Talon’s _better_ interest if it was able to acquire said technology for itself. Thus, unaware of Reaper’s unique _history_ with the organization, they had sent him to intervene and steal the research in Overwatch’s place.

 _This is a terrible plan_ , he mused.

He was pulled from his thoughts when a large gorilla entered his vision. He swallowed a snort of amusement. _Really?_ Winston in public was about as subtle as a snowstorm in July. He’d have thought Overwatch would send a group that could blend into crowds a little better than that. Were they _trying_ to get attention?

 _No, just pressed for time, more likely_. Winston got sloppy when he was panicked, and stealth hadn’t exactly been one of the new Overwatch’s greatest strengths to begin with. Still, their situation must have really been dire for them to send a giant anthropomorphous monkey along. His eyes slid to observe who else was with Winston. Torbjörn, Angela, and…

He stiffened. Soldier 76. _Jack_. He’d know that tacky biker jacket anywhere. The old man was glancing around, restless and paranoid. His eyes were hidden, of course, but his head kept turning to face the huge statue of Strike Commander Morrison that towered over the rest of the monument.

 _Distracted by your own image, Morrison?_ Reaper thought bitterly, cursing under his breath. This mission just got a whole lot more irritating.

He dissolved into dark mist, quietly relieved to let his nanites rest, and followed the entourage of obnoxiously out-of-place Overwatch agents. They stopped in a secluded corner, and Winston handed Soldier something that looked like a recolored biotic emitter. The group talked in low voices for a few minutes until finally Winston, Angela, and Torbjörn stepped back. Soldier knelt to place the device on the ground and pressed a button.

 _They’re sending_ him _to the past, of all people?_ He shook it off. Overwatch’s terrible decisions did not change his own agenda. He waited for the device to light up before dissolving and reconstructing himself inside the small field it was projecting.

No one reacted quickly enough. Soldier startled and jerked his rifle up to shove Reaper away, but Reaper let it phase through him before he solidified so he could catch it by the barrel and shove back. Soldier staggered, but he had been kneeling before he made to stand and his knees easily fell back into a grounded stance. He would not be budged. Reaper hissed wisps of smoke between his teeth in frustration and let go of the rifle in favor of kicking at Soldier’s shin. Soldier did not fall, but he slipped and his foot knocked into the time device. The device wobbled dangerously, the projected field flickering for a second, but it righted itself with its mechanical legs.

Winston could only watch in horror; he had not brought his Tesla cannon, Reaper had noticed, presumably because it was too big to carry around in public and he had not expected to need it anyway. Torbjörn seemed to be in much the same situation. Only Angela had brought her pistol and was holding it out with her finger on the trigger. But, unpracticed as she was, she could not fire without the risk of hitting Soldier.

Reaper’s intention had been to push Soldier out of the radius of the time capsule before it fully activated, but the stubborn old man only dug in his heels more at every hit, refusing to be moved.

And then it was too late. There was a blinding hot flash, a nauseating sense of movement that couldn’t be verified by anything but their churning insides, and then dark.

Reaper opened his eyes to find the red glare of Soldier’s visor in his face. Soldier was on top of him, pinning his wrists to the ground.

“ _Reyes_ ,” Soldier snarled. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“The same thing as you, old man,” Reaper said, injecting venom carefully into every word. Part of him wanted to remove his mask just so he could give Soldier a monstrous grin to match.

Soldier chose to reply by lifting a fist and nearly smashing it down on Reaper’s face. Reaper dissipated away just in time to avoid it and Soldier’s fist met the hard floor with a _crack_. He reconstructed himself standing back a foot, leaving Soldier kneeling on nothing.

“You didn’t think that through, did you?” he stated more than asked, tapping a clawed finger against the side of his mask in mock-thoughtfulness.

Soldier sat back on his heels, somehow managing to shoot Reaper a weary look without showing his face. “If you’re going to shoot me, quit screwing around and do it.”

Reaper shrugged. “If you insist.” Smoke circled his hand and materialized into a shotgun. He lifted it to press the barrel against Soldier’s forehead.

“…They were _my_ people! You had no right…“

Reaper’s trigger finger stilled. Voices were filtering in from the hallway. He looked up and for the first time took in where exactly they had landed. They were in a corner off a side hallway on the first floor of the Zurich Overwatch headquarters, a hallway he remembered passing through many times. It was surreal, seeing it again; the place was so generic, he could have been in any white hallway, and yet it was disarmingly familiar.

The voices arguing loudly around the corner were also familiar. Soldier had tensed up, both of them listening intently to figure out where the sounds were coming from. Soldier’s hand shot out abruptly and yanked Reaper down by the wrist, pulling him over to press against the wall. Soldier put his finger up in front of his face, the universal signal for _quiet_ , and Reaper nearly smacked him. _I know, asshole_.

Both the footsteps and shouting increased in volume as they approached.

“What do you _want me to do_ , Gabe?”

Reaper’s eyes widened under his mask. The source of Soldier’s hunched shoulders was suddenly obvious.

“ _You’re_ the Strike Commander, Jack!” His own voice, harsh with anger but still recognizably _his_ voice, produced with his own living vocal chords instead of approximated by vibrating nanites. “You won’t listen to me anyway-“

“ _Fuck off_. Stop making this about you.”

“What, like it’s never always about _you_ , golden boy?”

“ _Don’t_ you call me that.”

“ _Listen_ , asshole, it’s not about _either_ of us, it’s about the fact that _my men_ are _dead_ -“

“I didn’t-“

“Yeah, you _didn’t do anything_ , Jack.”

There was an ugly smacking sound, and then a thud. Reaper’s hand instinctively went to his face. He remembered this argument. Jack had punched him and he’d landed hard against the wall.

“I’m not having this conversation with you.” Jack’s voice was dangerously low. “See you later.”

The sound of Jack’s boots stomping away echoed in the quiet. There was silence, a muttered, “ _motherfucker_ ,” and then the clip of Gabriel’s shoes retreating in the other direction.

Soldier was completely still except for his left thumb, which he was rubbing restlessly between his middle and ring fingers. He always used to fidget like that whenever he was anxious, and no amount of military conditioning had ever quite knocked it out of him.

Reaper wondered if he still had the ring on under his gloves.

“Still want me to shoot you?” he offered instead.

Soldier’s other hand came up to rub his left ring finger between his right index and thumb. He didn’t seem to be aware that he was doing it. “We can’t stay here,” he said after a moment. His inflection was tentative, like he wasn’t totally _there_. He hadn’t looked at Reaper since the voices had become clear, instead staring off into the empty hallway.

Reaper narrowed his eyes and waved a hand in front of Soldier’s face. “Hey,” he said sharply. “Where’d you go?”

Soldier’s sinking posture jolted upright and his hands curled into fists. He glanced down at them, like he wasn’t sure what to do with them for a moment, before hurriedly swiping his rifle up off the ground and standing. He turned to face Reaper and shifted his gun so he could offer a hand to help him up. Reaper pointedly ignored the offer and stood on his own.

The wrinkles on Soldier’s forehead creased, and Reaper knew he was frowning. “If you want to pick a fight, hold off until we find somewhere safe.” His voice was clipped, distant.

Reaper suppressed a laugh by exhaling through his nose. “So now we're working together, boy scout?”

Soldier gave a full-bodied sigh, his whole torso rising and falling with exasperation. “Look,” he snapped, bending to pick up the time capsule and squirrelling it away in a holster, “we’re both after the same thing. We can either kill each other and possibly fuck up time by leaving bodies in the past, or we can work together and get the job done faster.”

“And Talon getting respawn tech in the process doesn’t bother you.”

The creases on Soldier’s forehead became even more pronounced. “Better both of us get it than neither,” he bit out, every word forcibly spoken as if they cut his mouth. Reaper snorted, half expecting him to start spitting up blood.

“Yeah, and you’ve always been such a team player, haven’t you?” he replied smoothly.

“More than _you_ ,” Soldier shot back, bristling. “I’m not the one who always went charging in ahead of everyone else only to get injured and become a liability. _I’m_ the _only one_ who bothered keeping a biotic emitter around to save _your_ stupid ass-“

“And you did a _brilliant_ job.” Reaper held up a hand and let it drip into a gooey mist that congealed as a puddle on the floor. “Congratulations, you saved me.”

Soldier didn’t deign to respond. He shoved past Reaper, deliberately knocking into him hard with his shoulder, and glanced around the hallway before taking off. Reaper pulled himself together in the literal sense and followed.

As they passed through the old base, Jack’s voice echoed in his head.

_“I’m not having this conversation with you.”_

_That was the problem, wasn’t it_? Reaper thought. _We never did have that conversation._

That argument had been among the first of many. Jack had been Strike Commander for a little over six months, if he recalled correctly, and they were still living together at that point. He felt a phantom pressure on his finger where his ring had been. They never did get around to making it official. There hadn’t ever been enough time, between missions and paperwork and fielding the media. Then…

_“We’re done.”_

_Jack’s face, warped with purple splotches under his puffy eyes and his lips twisted around a violent scowl, the faint freckles on his cheeks hidden under smears of an angry red flush. The ring glinted up at them desperately from the floor, as if pleading with them to stop._

_“Get out, then.”_

Then it was too late.

 

* * *

 

 

There was an unused munitions storage room on the third floor. Reaper was surprised Soldier remembered which rooms were in use and which weren’t that particular year, but he didn’t question it. The empty shelves were covered in dust, but it was large enough to fit the two of them comfortably and that was pretty rare in a hiding place.

Soldier was sitting on the floor with his back against the far wall, studying information on his visor. Reaper leaned against the closed door, arms folded across his chest, and watched him in silence. Soldier jerked forward minutely every now and again, tiny movements that Reaper would have surely missed if he weren’t paying such close attention.

 _Is Morrison coughing?_ he wondered suddenly. Maybe the dust was more of a problem than he thought. Studying Soldier’s mask more intently, he realized there were little filtration devices built into it. _Did his lungs get fucked up too or something?_

“Old man,” he rumbled, and Soldier stirred at his voice. “Let’s get going already. I’m tired of this closet.”

Soldier shook his head. “We can’t sneak into the labs until-“ He stopped, his head making another aborted movement down. He cleared his throat before continuing. “We have to wait another couple of hours.”

Reaper tilted his head and was silent for another few minutes. “I’m going out,” he said, uncrossing his arms.

Soldier looked at him, his forehead creased again. “What?”

“I’m going out,” he repeated. “This place is too claustrophobic.”

“Like hell you are,” Soldier growled. “You’ll get spotted.”

Reaper rolled his eyes under his mask. “Unlike _you_ , old man, I know a thing or two about stealth.”

Soldier’s hand made a move to reach for his gun but he pulled it back, as if his first instinct was to shoot Reaper but he thought better of it. “The walking Hot Topic mannequin is giving _me_ a lecture on stealth?” he said instead.

“Oh of _course_ , walking around in an American flag biker jacket is _way_ more covert than all black,” Reaper replied in mock astonishment before returning to his normal snarl. “You wouldn’t know stealth if it tailed you for ten blocks and stabbed you in the back.”

“I think I know a backstabber when I see one,” Soldier snapped back.

“Please Morrison, you can’t see shit without that stupid visor.”

“ _Fine_.” Soldier was pointedly looking down, back to reading off said visor. “Get out, then. See if I care.”

_“We’re done.”_

_“Get out, then.”_

Reaper yanked the door open and the only thing that stopped him from slamming it shut on his way out was that doing so would be un-stealthy.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed to himself. He had been _trying_ to convince Soldier to leave the storage room so the dust wouldn’t bother him, and it had devolved into fighting, as always. Now he wasn’t entirely sure where to go. He could always bail on the joint mission idea and go steal the respawn research by himself – as he had intended to do from the beginning – but Soldier had been right. The timing was wrong. He would still have to wait a few hours or else get caught.

 _Dammit_. Now, because pride wouldn’t let him just go back to the storage room and wait with Soldier, he had to go find his own hiding place. Great.

The hall was blessedly empty, but Reaper knew it wouldn’t be for long. He dissolved and moved along the floor, following the wall. People tended to notice things at eye-level, naturally, so if someone did come along, he would hopefully be able to sneak into an air vent or something until they passed. Where could he hide?

 _Wait-_ He was ready to smack himself. The air vents! He could just make himself a comfortable pile of mist in the ventilation system somewhere until it was time to go skulking back to Soldier. He reconstructed himself partially to look around and found a vent without much trouble.

Once he had settled in, he became painfully aware of one small miscalculation: he had no idea what time it was. He had never been one to wear a watch, and he had no idea how they were made so he couldn’t construct one for himself out of nanites the way he was able to materialize his shotguns.

_Okay, looks like I have to go find a clock then._

Or he could just go back to Soldier, who had a clock built into his visor and who he would need to regroup with at some point anyway so they could steal the research together.

_Finding a clock it is._

 

* * *

 

Reaper had wandered through the air vents for what felt like ages until he found a large window that sat conveniently across from the vent. _Nature’s clock_ , he decided. _As good as any_. He had to partially reconstruct himself every time he wanted to check the sun’s movement across the sky, but it wasn’t a problem.

As he idled, the scene he had witnessed earlier came back to him. Hearing his own voice, not even as a recording but in real time, had been unsettling. He hadn’t been prepared for the anger, the _hurt_ that echoed through it. It was one thing to feel those emotions and spew them out with words, but it was another to _listen_ to it. Had he even realized the depth of his frustration at the time? Even then – even when Jack had _punched_ him – he hadn’t ever suspected the cruel extent to which their conflict would eventually escalate.

 _It was Jack’s job to listen_ , he thought bitterly. He hadn’t been able hear himself, but _Jack_ should have. Jack could have listened instead of plugging up his ears and pretending nothing was wrong.

_“Gabe, the UN, um…”_

_“I heard. Promotion to Strike Commander, right? Congrats.”_

_Jack was twisting the ring on his finger. “I thought- I thought I should talk to you about it.”_

_“What is there to say?”_

_“I’m… I know this isn’t how we expected it to go, but I think-“_

_Gabriel had cut him off with a chaste kiss. “It’s okay,” he had said, and Jack had frowned. “Really. You’re gonna be great.”_

Should have pushed, Jack. Should have asked.

_Jack was still turning the ring like it burned. Like it was strangling him._

_“Okay,” he had said, smiling with his lips though his eyes were dark. “We still have some champagne left over, right?”_

Shouldn’t have dropped it. Should’ve demanded a conversation.

Jack had always been good at demanding things, except when it really mattered.

Reaper’s particles shuddered and merged into a semi-solid so he could check the window again. There was movement on the periphery of his vision and it caught him by surprise; all the other times he had checked, the hallway had been empty. He flattened against the side of the air vent, paranoid that whoever it was would somehow be able to see him.

“I want that report by the end of the day, no excuses.”

He was barely able to hold his nanites together. It was his voice again. He dared to peek through the bars of the vent and saw some underling he couldn’t remember hastily making an exit. Then he turned his attention to the figure standing by the window and there he was.

Gabriel Reyes was leaning against the windowsill, his beanie in one hand while his other went up to card through his hair. There were faint bags under his eyes, and a bruise starting to color his cheek where Jack had punched him earlier. He took a deep breath, his shoulders rising with it and then sagging against the glass. God, had he really looked so tired?

He reached for his pocket, hesitated, and then drew out a pack of cigarettes. It was a habit he had picked up as a kid in high school, a mechanism to cope with stress, but he had been forced to quit when he joined the SEP. Any non-approved chemicals entering their bodies were strictly forbidden, as it could mess with the super soldier injections. Tobacco had been on the list. Reaper couldn’t remember when he had picked it up again, after the Omnic Crisis, but he remembered that Jack hadn’t liked it.

He supposed it must have been a recent development, after watching himself fumble with the lighter. Out of practice. He remembered having to sneak away to smoke, so Jack wouldn’t know, but he always found out anyway. The smell wasn’t hard to mistake. Jack never said anything, but his nose always wrinkled when Gabriel moved to kiss him. Just one more secret they never discussed.

Something like a chuckle vibrated through Reaper. Now he was composed entirely of the vice Jack had always disliked. Irony was Fate’s mistress.

A few minutes passed. He watched Gabriel lean out the open window, watched the muscles of his back relax bit by bit but never fully lose the ever-present tension. Then, footsteps. Gabriel dropped the cigarette out the window and turned to face the approaching person.

“Figured you’d come crawling back,” he said with a wry smile. Only half-joking.

Jack stepped into view. He glanced at the window and his nose wrinkled. It would have been cute if it weren’t for his barely concealed disgust. He opened his mouth, then closed it. He shook his head. “I’m not here to pick a fight with you.” His voice was quiet and Reaper had to strain to hear it.

Gabriel stretched, cracking something in his neck. “Then…?”

 _An apology_. That was what he had wanted. Jack was too proud for apologies. He had wanted the impossible.

Jack’s lips were pressed together in a thin line. He had learned to do that instead of bite them when he became Strike Commander. It was unbecoming of a poster boy to bite his lips like a nervous child.

“I just, Gabriel…” He hesitated, then he stepped closer and gently cupped Gabriel’s face. “I love you,” he said, and the sheer honesty of his voice shook something in Reaper’s core. “No matter what. I love you.”

It had affected Gabriel too. His eyes were wide, and then his expression softened with a faint smile. “Yeah. Me too.”

They moved closer and Reaper couldn’t watch anymore. It was too private, too intimate for an outsider to see, even if it was his own past. He deconstructed completely and his sense of sight and hearing disappeared.

_“I love you. No matter what.”_

He had forgotten this. He remembered the argument before, but he had forgotten the resolution. He felt raw, all of a sudden, tender in the way a healing wound is, simultaneously wanting to curl in on himself in self-defense and being repulsed by the idea of touching any particle of himself together.

_“Yeah. Me too.”_

His voice. His own voice. He had said that.

 _“Me too_.”

He had loved Jack once, he realized. He truly had. Somewhere along the way, that fact had been lost to him. The semblance of warmth had been scrapped for anger. For fire.

His misty form spasmed. _I love you. No matter what. Me too. No matter what._

 

* * *

 

 

Reaper found his way back to the storage room and opened the door a crack to slip inside. Soldier was exactly where he had left him, slumped against the far wall. His visor seemed to be powered off and his arms were folded loosely across his chest, which rose and fell in slow, measured breaths.

_Is he… asleep?_

Reaper tiptoed closer and bent his knees for further examination. Sure enough, the old man was out like a light. Even with the visor on, he seemed oddly peaceful. The lines in his forehead had smoothed out some and his muscles seemed to unwind from their usual coiled state, for once not ready to spring into action at any second.

Reaper could imagine Soldier’s face beneath the mask. Thirty years ago, it was the face he used to wake up to every day. Sometimes he would fight sleep at night so he could memorize what Jack looked like, peaceful and safe. Now, he’d be older, more scarred and worn, but Reaper was sure that his nose still twitched every now and again in reaction to dreams, that his mouth still hung just the slightest bit open.

His clawed fingers came up to touch Soldier’s thinning hair but his hand was knocked away before he could get there. Soldier had woken up, presumably from the near-contact, and was rigidly still against the wall. He quickly tapped on his visor and fixed Reaper with a wordless stare.

“Take a nap while I was gone?” Reaper asked.

Soldier ignored the question. “Find anything important?”

 _We used to love each other._ “No.”

Soldier grunted. “Good to know that risk was totally worth the payoff.”

 _You used to love me._ “Good to know you left yourself totally vulnerable while I was gone.”

Soldier didn’t respond. He stood heavily, tipping on his feet at first but steadying himself against the wall. Reaper curled his fingers into fists. He had almost reached out to help.

_I loved you._

“Come on,” Soldier grumbled, pushing past. “Time to go.”

 

* * *

 

 

The underground laboratories were nearly impossible for any normal person to get into unauthorized. The only entrance was an inconspicuous elevator that required a passcode and authorized DNA sample to operate. The air vents were tiny and had filtration barriers set up at each end, for the purposes of containing any airborne chemicals and expelling any unwanted particles that could wander in from the outside as well as defending against potential invasions. Apart from that, the labs were entirely sealed off. When personnel were not working in the labs, the elevator was shut down and became inaccessible. In addition, all air was vacuumed out of the place as a safety – and security – precaution.

Normal thieves might only worry about the elevator and not mind having to face a few scientists. However, Reaper and Soldier were different. Soldier knew the passcodes and his DNA would satisfy the scanner; the elevator would easily allow Strike Commander Morrison into the labs. It was the scientists that posed the problem. They couldn’t risk having to take out anyone they might run into as it could alter the future somehow.

Precise timing was required. All scientists were to clear the labs by exactly 11:00 pm. At exactly 11:05 pm, the place was sealed off and the vacuum was created.

Five minutes. They had five minutes to get in, copy the research without leaving a trace, and get out.

They waited around a corner and Soldier used his visor to track each scientist as they left the lab. He, at least, had come prepared; he had a list of every single lab employee’s name and face downloaded. Every time one left, he muttered a name under his breath and checked them off the list on his readout.

At 10:58 pm, the lab was empty and, thankfully, so was the hall. They entered the elevator and Soldier hurriedly entered a passcode into the keypad. A tiny needle flipped out of a panel in the wall and Soldier removed one of his gloves to let it prick the tip of his finger. The computer processed it and, after a short, tense moment, the screen flashed green and the elevator doors shut so it could begin its descent down.

“Good evening, Strike Commander,” said Athena’s synthetic voice over the intercom. “Please be aware that the laboratories will be shut down in exactly six minutes and twelve seconds. It is highly recommended that you make your visit as brief as possible, so as to avoid any potential harm.”

“Thanks,” Soldier mumbled, setting a timer on his visor to six minutes.

As soon as the doors swung open, they took off running for the small office at the back of the lab. There was a large desktop computer sitting on a nondescript desk; behind it, shelves upon shelves of hard drives containing all of Overwatch’s top secret experimental research. Reaper immediately went to work sorting through the hard drives while Soldier sat at the desk and began the task of getting into the computer. _Thank god for Strike Commander all-purpose access codes._

“5 minutes,” Soldier said, not looking away from the computer screen.

Reaper nodded though he knew Soldier wouldn’t see. He continued to thumb through drive after drive, internally cursing the disorganization of these scientists. He would have thought people carrying out experiments that required extraordinary attentiveness would be a little more precise with their research storage. Not a single drive was in alphabetical or numerical order, and some were carefully placed upright while others were haphazardly thrown in sideways. At least the mess meant it would be very unlikely for anyone to notice if something was slightly out of place from where it had been left.

“4 minutes.”

“We should’ve seriously come up with better organization protocols,” Reaper growled. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard a snort of amusement from Soldier.

After a few more tense seconds, he finally landed on an inconspicuous black drive with a tape label on the side that read, “HND #248.” _Heroes never die._ He grabbed it and thrust it at Soldier, who plugged it into the desktop along with a flash drive taken from one of his pockets. Then all that was left was an easy drag-and-drop of the files from the drive to the USB.

Soldier tapped his fingers impatiently on the desk, counting down with the timer in his visor under his breath. Reaper stood stock still as he watched the progress bar on the screen fill, relatively quickly for the number of files being transferred but not fast enough.

“3 minutes,” Soldier said, his frown lines returning with vengeance.

 _There isn’t enough time,_ Reaper realized with a start. At the steady rate of the progress bar, it would probably finish right about when the labs would be sealed. They would get the information in time, but they wouldn’t be able to escape.

“2 and a ha-”

“Go,” Reaper interrupted.

Soldier turned to look at him. “What?”

“There isn’t enough time,” Reaper hissed. “Get to the elevator.” He emphasized the point with a shove to Soldier’s shoulder.

“But-“

“I’ll teleport to the exit once the download is finished,” he said, the urgency in his voice strange even to his own ears. “It’ll be fine. But you have to get out right now, or there won’t be time. Then we’ll have to explain how the fuck your asphyxiated body got here from the future.”

Soldier stood, but he was rigid. “If this is your plan to steal the research for Talon,” he started, but Reaper cut him off with a humorless laugh.

“And how exactly am I supposed to get back without _your_ time capsule?” he replied. “Don’t worry, boy scout, I’ll have to come crawling back to you one way or another. Besides, you’re the only one who can work the elevator. Just wait for me there. We can make our escape at the last second like badasses.”

Soldier was still for a second, and Reaper could imagine his contemplative frown under the mask. Then he nodded stiffly. “I read you,” he said. He hesitated for one more second before adding a gruff, “I better see you in 2 minutes, soldier.” With that, he dashed for the exit.

Reaper breathed a nervous sigh and watched the clock on the desktop slowly tick away. 1 minute. The progress bar slowed and he cursed it out until it sped up again.

30 seconds. _Not enough time._

The progress bar hit the end. He ripped out the drive and tossed it back with the others before grabbing the USB and hitting the power button on the desktop in the same movement.

10 seconds. _Not enough time._

“ _Go!_ ” he yelled to Soldier right as he began to dissolve.

The elevator doors were closing.

He wasn’t going to make it.

He slammed against the sealed doors a moment after they shut. _Fuck_. He spun around and watched the ventilation barriers disappear as they began sucking the air out. Even a half-dead creature composed of nanites like him needed oxygen to function. Something about aerobic respiration being an efficient source of energy.

His vision went fuzzy and his form began to lose its shape. _Need to leave the flash somewhere so he can get it tomorrow._ He began half-stumbling, half-drifting back to the office. _Need to…_

He wondered if Soldier would be upset. He tried to laugh but it came out as a near-silent wheeze. Maybe Soldier would cry, like he did at Ana’s funeral.

 _You were always an ugly crier, Morrison,_ he thought, unable to help a grin even as his face began to flake away. The thought of ruining the attractiveness of that handsome face with his death was a comfort, somehow.

Within seconds, he was a puddle of viscous smoke against the wall, fighting to stay conscious and aware of his surroundings. _Everything’s taller from down here,_ he mused, though he could barely see. Most of the room was now composed of dark shapes and flickering, muted colors.

But as his sight disappeared, he became more aware of the airflow. He could feel particles whizzing by him. Where were they…

Once again – _duh, the vents!_ With the barriers gone, he would be able to travel through the ventilation system.

Mustering the last of his strength, he split himself apart smaller than he had ever managed before. He remembered something about how his nanites weren’t supposed to become smaller than a certain size or else he could risk losing his consciousness forever, but he found he didn't care. It was this or nothing.

As he broke himself down further and further, he began to black out at an increasingly rapid pace. He couldn’t manage any coherent thought anymore. He felt the current and let it carry him.

For just a moment, he could embrace the numbness.

 

* * *

 

 

_“Don’t scare me like that ever again.”_

_Jack’s voice. Thick with drying tears. Hands cupping his cheeks, then lips on his forehead._

_“I thought I lost you.” A whisper._

_“You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried, sweetheart,” came his own voice, rusted over but audible. “When I die, I’m going to become a ghost and haunt you.”_

_A croak of a laugh. “Don’t say shit like that in a hospital bed, please.”_

 

Reaper became aware of his senses in sluggish stages. First, he could feel his own weightlessness become solid and grounded once more. Then the numbness that had flooded him began to give way to a dull ache. It spread throughout him, throbbing lazily like the heartbeat he no longer had.

“Reyes.”

He was uncomfortable. He shifted, but the surface underneath him was cold and unforgiving.

“ _Reyes_.”

His eyes opened. Soldier was hovering over him, expression unreadable as always thanks to the visor.

“Been a while since I’ve had you on top of me _,_ ” he rasped.

Soldier punched his shoulder, but it was weak. “Son of a bitch,” he said and his tone was oddly muffled with a synthetic overlay. Like it was smoothing out his voice. “You piece of shit. I gave you an order.”  
Reaper heaved himself upright, wheezing out smoke through the holes in his mask. “When have I ever followed your orders?”

The quip was meant as a lighthearted tease, but Soldier bristled. “You could have _died_.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Reaper shrugged. “Look, I got the flash drive, so-“

“That’s not the point, Reyes.”

“Then _what_?” he snapped, beginning to lose his patience.

Soldier huffed, his shoulders falling as he looked away. Reaper wondered at how he could look so pensive with the expressionless visor masking his face. “I shouldn’t have brought you along,” he said finally. His voice was mechanically even. “I should have just done this myself.”

Reaper could feel his nanites struggling to stay together. He counted to ten in his head, willing his anger away from impacting his physical form. “ _What_?”

Soldier shook his head and pushed off his knee to stand.

“What?” Reaper repeated for the third time, quieter. Sharper.

Soldier flinched at his tone. It was subtle, a mere twitch at his eyebrows, a crease in his temple. But Reaper knew what to look for.

“I shouldn’t have-“ Soldier stopped, backpedaled with a roll of his shoulders. “I should’ve known better than to trust the judgment of the former Blackwatch commander,” he said tonelessly.

Reaper’s nanites exploded into a swarm of synthetic wasps before collecting into his body once more, standing now. He crowded into Soldier’s space, his mind blank except for the overpowering buzz of white-hot anger.

_I loved you._

“You’re right,” he spat. _No matter what._ “You’re right, you _shouldn’t_ have trusted me. You _never_ trusted me.” _He did, a long time ago._ “You never trusted anyone but your _own god damn self_ because you’re perfect, isn’t that right? Golden boy, boy scout, the infallible Strike Commander himself, John ‘Jack’ _fucking_ Morrison.” He shoved the flash drive into Soldier’s chest. “ _Take it_ , I don’t give a shit. You earned it all by yourself, just like you earned your command.” He dropped the drive and Soldier caught it with faintly shaking fingers.

_Me too._

He turned, tugging his hood lower over his already-covered face. “Let’s get out of here,” he grumbled. “I’m sick of looking at you.”

Soldier was blessedly silent. If he decided to open his mouth, Reaper was almost sure he would shoot him in the head without a second thought.

_No matter what._

 

* * *

  

_“Please, Gabe.” Jack’s voice was careful, tender, but his eyes were hard. “I can’t do this without you. I need you on my six. Blackwatch is…” He hesitated, the politician in him turning the gears in his brain. Thinking through the best phrasing. “I need someone I can trust, unconditionally.”_

_“Someone who won’t stab you in the back for handing them the keys to Overwatch’s backdoor.”_

_“Gabe-“_

_“Calm down, dumbass_. _I didn’t say no.”_

_Jack’s eyebrows rose, taken aback. “I…” He smiled, exhaling in relief. “Thanks.”_

 

* * *

 

 

Soldier knelt to set the time capsule on the ground. Reaper watched him replace the core, arms crossed and smoke billowing out from under his coat. Soldier’s fingers were steady as he readied the device – _always steady, always, the hands of a field medic soothing injuries amidst the screaming and death_ – but his shoulders were curled forward, hunched up by his ears instead of pushed back with dignity. _He always had proud shoulders, the kind of noble, upright posture that demanded people listen._

“I better not get shot on sight when we get back,” Reaper growled.

“I’ll tell my team to stand down,” Soldier replied as he stood, his back to Reaper still.

They fell silent, the thin whirring of the device failing to fill the space between them. Reaper dug his claws into his arm and opened his mouth.

The time capsule flashed to life before he could think of what to say.

He blinked, adjusting to his vertigo. They were still in the hallway. The floors were more polished and the walls were bathed in soft yellow light, but it was unmistakably the same hallway.

They were still in the Zurich base.

Soldier was looking back and forth, his head swinging so quickly that his hidden eyes had to be wide in alarm. “This…” He rushed around the corner to peer out the nearby window.

“What?” Reaper followed, nanites humming just under his skin with annoyance. “Did the machine fuck up?”

“The sculpture is gone.”

Reaper tilted his head, a question, but Soldier was staring through the glass with single-minded focus and did not see.

“What sculpture?” Reaper asked.

It took Soldier a moment to answer. The words came slowly, the static of his mask filling in the long gaps between his thoughts and his speech. “They built a sculpture. In 2043. Some modern art piece. It was destroyed during the Omnic Crisis, and then the UN commissioned something to replace it in 2045.” An electronic crackle accompanied his pause. “It’s not there.”

“So…” Reaper shifted from one foot to the other. “When are we?”

Soldier ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. He returned to the corner and leaned against the wall as he fiddled with his visor.

“2042,” he answered after a few minutes. “It’s…” He made a sound that Reaper assumed was supposed to be a breathless laugh, but it was warped by the filter. “May 15, 2042.” He was fidgeting with his ring finger again.

Reaper knew better than to interrupt him with questions about the significance of any of this. That would earn him a pointed glare for an answer and nothing else. So he waited.

“Before the Omnic Crisis, this was a military university,” Soldier explained haltingly. “The building was eventually re-appropriated to house Overwatch, but, I actually studied here. To be a field medic. Tomorrow was the day I graduated.”

“Then you got drafted and ended up in SEP with me.” Reaper shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Just recalibrate the machine and let’s go.”

Soldier shook his head. “I don’t know how.”

Reaper’s talons dug into his arm and he could feel his nanites scrambling to reproduce the broken flesh. “ _What_?”

Soldier’s head jerked up minutely and he watched Reaper for a beat. His fingers flexed, tangling and curling in on themselves. His forehead creased to accompany the scowl he surely had under the mask.

“Winston and Torbjörn pre-calibrated it,” he snapped. “It _should_ have worked-“ He stopped. “When you attacked me, the capsule-“

“ _You’re_ the one who hit it with your foot.”

“I wouldn’t have hit it if _you_ hadn’t-“

“Who travels back in time without knowing how to use your machine?” Reaper’s vision was starting to get a little fuzzy around the edges as he struggled to hold himself together.

Soldier straightened, forcing his hands to his sides where they clenched into fists. “Look, _I_ wasn’t the one who-”

“ _No_ ,” Reaper hissed, smoke rippling out from the ends of his limbs. “Don’t you blame this on me, like you _always_ blame _everything_ on me.” He jabbed a smoldering, clawed finger into Soldier’s chest. “You don’t _get to_ blame this on me. I’m through destroying myself over your own misplaced guilt. You’ve always been too _goddamn important_ to handle your own mistakes, so you farm them out to anyone close enough to take the bullet.”

He could feel his volume rising, his particles vibrating faster, hotter, his voice becoming increasingly distorted as the nanites that synthesized his vocal folds started to heat up to a fever pitch. They were burning more with every tremor, threatening to break apart, the strain of remaining solid verging on overwhelming. His form expanded rapidly, towering over the soldier in a vicious dark swarm. Still, he willed his vocal system to hold together.

“I _died_ for your mistakes, _Morrison_.” He spat the name like it was a curse. “Because you couldn’t take the heat. Because _somebody_ had to be sacrificed for our _dear Strike Commander’s_ image. Because _you_ never made mistakes, did you? No, everything was _my_ fault. Just blame everything on Blackwatch, on _me_ , make me out to be the bad guy so you can escape. _You_ turned me into a monster _years_ before the good doctors did.” He cupped Soldier’s face in his now grotesquely misshapen hands and breathed a thick, black smog against the ever-impassive visor that he hated so much. “Maybe _you_ were the monster all along, Morrison,” he said, low in his artificial throat. “Maybe it was always _you_.”

Soldier said nothing, at first. The only sound that could be heard above the drone of Reaper’s nanite hive was the harsh sputter of Soldier’s breathing as it filtered through his mask.

Finally: “Understood.”

The single word was clipped, professionally detached. The voice that had always been accompanied by a glassy, faraway look in his eye and an inability to comprehend anything unrelated to the work directly before him.

Reaper’s nanite cluster shrank back to its normal size and he stepped back, eyeing the man in front of him warily. He was expecting a fist to his face – one he honestly could not be sure he would phase through – but it never came. Soldier merely set his shoulders back, carved out his commander’s posture from granite, and walked away.

 

* * *

 

 

 _“Hey,_ _blondie.” He snapped his fingers in Jack’s face. “Look at me.”_

_Jack flinched, the corners of his eyes wrinkling as he looked up from his desk. They were rimmed with red from lack of sleep, glazed over and uncomprehending._

_“You’ve been sitting in that chair for six hours, dumbass. You’re going to injure your back.”_

_Jack blinked, then squinted as he processed the words. “I…”_

_“It’s time for dinner. Come eat.”_

_“But-“_

_“Those reports can wait. Your stomach can’t.”_

_Jack stared down at the papers in front of him, the twitch in his fingers, still wrapped tightly around his pen, giving away how much he had taxed the muscles in his hand and wrist. He had always pressed down too hard when he wrote._

_“One more,” he said. “Just one more.”_

 

* * *

 

 

Reaper stewed in the corner, watching the fog of his extremities roll back and forth through the air around him as his nanites worked off the extra heat energy for twenty minutes before he made a decision.

Soldier had left the time capsule behind when he left, but he had taken the energy core with him. If they wanted to figure out how to get back to the present, Reaper would need to find him eventually. At least, that was the logic he used to justify the nauseating weight curling up in his core that told him he had made a mistake.

 _I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true_ , he thought bitterly but the anxious knot inside him only grew. With a rumbling sigh of exasperation, he laced his particles back together and set off.

Souls were sticky things, with a unique heat signature that they tended to leave about wherever they were for a small window of time. Soldier’s trail was faint at best by this point, but Reaper could just barely track it as it wound through the cold halls.

The soft, milky glow from the setting sun that had enveloped everything earlier had since sunk into a deep, harsh red. It splattered the walls with color, standing out starkly between pillars of shadow projected from the space between windows. In the dying light and the chilled air, the heat residue of Soldier’s soul shone weakly as a white glimmer in the undisturbed atmosphere. The golden hour had passed at this point, and the dark was creeping in like an unearthly creature, visible only in the way the silhouettes thrown up against the walls lengthened and spread. They writhed every time he passed by, furling out to meet him when he blocked the window and then receding when he moved, patient. It was only a matter of time before the sun was gone completely, before the gloom would consume everything.

The path wound through the quiet base, at some points more dense where Soldier had presumably paused, and at others, so transparent and fragile as it hung in the empty space that it was nearly impossible to see. Still, Reaper followed dutifully. It eventually led him up some stairs to a rooftop. He tested the security door and found the lock had already been picked. He swung it open slowly, suddenly hesitant. There was something hanging over this place like a miasma, something he couldn’t quite place with any of his senses except his intuition.

Something was wrong.

He looked out across the rooftop and saw Soldier kneeling by the far edge, peering down along the line of his rifle. He was utterly still, mechanically calm in the way a soldier was when trained to harness their adrenaline. To focus it for the kill.

Reaper approached, gliding soundlessly across the cement. As he came closer, he was able to look out over the side of the building. There was a figure on the street below. A kid, he realized as he examined closer, a boy with blond hair and-

Time stopped when the understanding hit him. He opened his mouth, willed the nanites approximating his vocal folds to heat up, willed himself to shout _wait_ -

But he was cold when the shot rang out.

The sound pierced through the ethereal veil that had covered everything, shattered the withering remnants of warmth from the afternoon sun, sent them skittering away in all directions. It was dark.

Reaper watched himself gush forward like a tide, wrenching the rifle away and slamming Soldier into the ground. He descended on top of him, pinning Soldier’s wrists up by his head, and he watched himself become angry.

“What have you _done_?” he heard himself scream. The words were torn from him, sharp and raw like broken glass. But he didn’t understand.

The visor stared up at him indifferently. He hated it, he thought. He had never hated an object so much. He tore it from Soldier’s face, splintering apart the clasps that held it in place in the process, and was met with Jack Morrison’s tired smile.

“It’s done,” he said simply. His once-blue eyes were frosted with blindness, and yet Reaper had the sense that the old soldier was seeing him clearly for the first time in two decades.

On the street below, Jack Morrison lay dead in a pool of his own blood as it seeped out from his head. A clean shot. His life had been snatched away in an instant. Soon, a group of students would stumble across his body and cry out in fear. There would be chaos for a time, a brief period of confusion and terror, before his soul evaporated and a world without Jack Morrison settled quietly into place.

But now, on the roof, the Jack Morrison with crow’s feet and scars running through his face and through his heart was smiling.

“What have you done?” Reaper asked again, though he knew the answer.

The soldier shook his head, and Reaper realized his hands were becoming translucent, as if he was made of a thin film. He was slipping through Reaper’s fingers, slipping away _again_ , so peacefully that it was barely noticeable.

 

_He had been losing Jack for months now, and he hadn’t even noticed. The easy touches and honest love they had once shared between them had been drained away without a fuss and now he could hardly remember what it had been like, or how they had gotten here. How they had been reduced to resentful looks and shouting matches._

 

He was frantic as he tried to hold Soldier together, to tie him down to this plane of existence _somehow_ , but it was no use.

 

_They were still screaming at each other when the building started to come down around them. Jack was red with anger, eyes bright in the darkness of the room until a chunk of the ceiling broke off and obscured him from view. It wasn’t until his legs had been crushed by rubble that he grasped, too late, he would never see Jack again._

“I missed you,” Soldier admitted, his voice too small for the torrent of emotion and time that was crashing down on them. He was more a ghost than a man now, a rapidly dimming image. Reaper tried to touch his face but his hand passed through. The soldier shut his eyes and breathed his last.

 _I love you_ , Reaper realized with paralyzing lucidity, even as everything else dwindled away. He couldn’t see anymore, he couldn’t remember who he was. It was all leached away, but still he clung to the tiny kernel in his head that whispered _I love you_.

Then everything was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art of this chapter by Hanji: http://infinite-atmosphere.tumblr.com/post/162596650011/thanks-to-firesonic152-for-writing-one-of-the-best
> 
> I'm literally so happy oh my god nobody has ever drawn something for me like this before AHH


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for all the lovely comments and kudos<3 I was going to wait a bit longer to post this chapter but I didn't want to leave you all hanging for too long so! Here it is.
> 
> Once again, Sandcastle Kingdoms by NateWantsToBattle and Gone Tomorrow by Eyeshine are great albums to listen to while reading this :)

Gabriel rubbed his eyes and took another sip of his rapidly cooling coffee. He stretched, heard a crack when he lifted his arms and twisted his torso, and then relaxed in his seat. The cool light of his computer screen was starting to make his eyes sting, but he couldn’t go to bed just yet. He still had work to do.

He pushed away from the desk, as if backing away from the screen would make it zoom out and show the bigger picture. All it did was show him the messy stacks of paper that surrounded the monitor. He briefly considered, as he had many times before, sweeping his arm across the desk and just knocking everything off. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had seen its surface.

But if he cleared his desk, everything would end up on the floor and then he wouldn’t be able to walk through his office. He took another gulp of his coffee. The mess stayed on his desk.

He had just settled his fingers on the keyboard once more when there was a knock on his door. He rolled his chair back again, silently relieved to have an excuse for a break, and called out, “Door’s open.”

“Enjoying the light workload, I see,” Ana mused as she entered, shutting the door behind her.

Gabriel turned his head to give her a weary smile and waved a hand at the skyscrapers of paper. “Yep. I’m definitely going to bed early tonight.”

She put a hand on his shoulder and massaged the tense muscle gently, humming. “At least you’re signing human-omnic peace treaties now instead of execution orders.”

He leaned into her touch with a sigh. “Yeah. I just wish peace was a little more, you know… exciting.”

She laughed. “It is in the nature of peace to lack excitement.” She squeezed his shoulder comfortingly and said, softer, “We worked hard for this. You’ve earned a rest from the fighting, Gabriel.”

He tipped his head back, grinning wryly. “No rest for the Strike Commander, I’m afraid.”

She tipped her head, a familiar glint of mischief in her eye. “And who, exactly, has the authority to order that?”

He shrugged. “The UN?”

“Take a day off tomorrow, Gabriel.” She reached over him to turn off his monitor. “Come have lunch with Fareeha and I. Enjoy the world we gave our lives to create. Besides,” she winked – or rather, blinked her single eye playfully – and added, “Fareeha tells me she has someone she wants me to meet over lunch. I think she went and found herself a girlfriend.”

Gabriel shook his head, chuckling. “Well, now I’m curious.”

“Exactly.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, you got me. I’ll come.” He paused. “My money’s on that Dr. Ziegler girl.”

“I’m glad we agree, on both accounts.”

 

* * *

 

Gabriel halfheartedly covered his mouth as he yawned. The coffeemaker couldn’t work fast enough. Bleary, he watched one mug fill at an agonizing pace before setting it aside to fill the next one. The first he loaded up with sugar and milk and drank with a thankful sigh. Despite Ana’s insistence on taking a break, he had worked well into the early hours of the morning anyway.

 _Being Strike Commander really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,_ he mused. _Basically a standard desk job, but with more paperwork and less glory. And the ever-present threat of being court-martialed._ At least he was taking most of the afternoon off for her, so she couldn’t complain. When the second mug had been topped off, he dropped a pinch of sugar in it and turned to give it to-

He paused. Who was he supposed to give it to? He stared it down, as if the steam rising from the surface of the coffee would reveal a name to him. Who even liked their coffee with a pinch of sugar? Most people he knew either drank it without anything added at all or with the works. Who would notice just a pinch?

He looked up at the sound of heavy footsteps. “Ah, Reinhardt,” he greeted and raised the inexplicable second cup. “Coffee?”

Reinhardt smiled and took it, his huge hands dwarfing the mug. “Thank you, my friend! And good morning to you.”

Gabriel nodded and snuck out before Reinhardt could engage him in a proper conversation. He hadn’t slept nearly enough and the nagging feeling that he had forgotten something was making his head hurt worse than it already did. Reinhardt had seen him like this plenty of times before, though; he would understand.

He made his way through the halls of the Watchpoint, avoiding the main arteries. He wanted to run into as few people as possible. As he rounded a corner, he noticed a glove someone had carelessly dropped on the ground. He frowned as he bent to pick it up. _Can’t leave that lying around, he won’t see it and trip_.

It was a few minutes later, with the glove securely in his pocket, that he wondered with a jolt, _Who is “he”?_

The thought left him immediately when he opened the door to his office to find Ana waiting for him.

“I’m taking the day off, like I promised,” he said, pre-emptively refuting any accusations she might have made to the contrary.

She was smiling. “I believe you. I thought we could walk out together.” She glanced at the coffee mug in his hand before studying his face more intently. “You didn’t go to bed last night, did you?”

“I,” he started to argue, but she raised an eyebrow and he quieted. “I took a nap,” he offered lamely.

“In your office, I’m sure.”

“No,” he lied, thankful he had thought to put away the blanket he had used to sleep on the tiny office couch.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Gabriel.” She took the mug from him and set it on the desk next to the four others he kept meaning to wash so she could take his hand. “The war is _over_ , there is no need for our Strike Commander to still be killing himself for his job.”

“Yes there is.” He grimaced. “It’s never over, Ana. We’re at peace now, sure, but we have to work twice as hard to keep it that way. The omnics could decide at any time that they don’t think we’re honoring our side of the treaty. And nobody has forgotten _our_ losses, we can’t just forgive and expect everything to be hunky dory. If we-“

“ _Listen_ to yourself.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “Gabriel. The war is over.”

“It’s _never over_.” He tried to yank his hand away but she held onto him. “There’s still so much work to do, I can’t…”

“You can’t let yourself rest.” She was looking at him with such pity in her single eye that he couldn’t meet her gaze.

“No,” he admitted, “I can’t.”

Silence. She was waiting for him to say something, he was sure, but he didn’t have the words to explain himself.

When she saw that he was not going to speak, she went ahead herself. “You miss it.” She didn’t have to clarify what she meant by “it;” they both knew she was talking about the war.

“I don’t miss the _fighting_ , I just…” He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to sort out his thoughts. “I guess I miss knowing what I was doing. Having something to focus on. A goal. A, a purpose.”

“You still _do_ , Gabriel,” she insisted. “We need you to pave the way for a lasting peace, as our esteemed leader. But you can’t do that if you run yourself into the ground.”

She was right. He knew she was right. But it didn’t take away the twist deep down in his gut, the anxiety telling him something was missing. Something was _wrong_. He didn’t trust this peace.

“Okay,” he said. “You win. Where are we going for lunch?”

 

* * *

 

 

Ana was right. Fareeha brought along her new “partner,” the ambitious young doctor who was very quickly becoming Overwatch’s top medic. Gabriel had never met her before, but Angela had a firm handshake and looked him in the eye whenever she spoke so he approved.

They chatted over salads and pasta about meaningless things – the weather, the latest gossip, a few inside jokes that weren’t stale yet. Gabriel zoned out around the time Fareeha began recounting an incident involving McCree and a run-in with a stray cat. He had been a witness to that particular story, so he took a backseat and let Fareeha tell it.

As his mind wandered, muted chatter from the tables around him filtered through his awareness. Some people were laughing, some were quieter. There were two people who were especially invested in their conversation, louder than anyone else in the restaurant.

“…And I said, I told ‘em, ‘You dunno jack shit’…”

Gabriel tensed. He couldn’t hear anything all of a sudden – his heartbeat was pounding against his eardrums.

 _Jack_.

There was a hand in front of his face. He blinked and realized Ana, Fareeha, and Angela were all staring at him worriedly.

“Are you okay?” Fareeha asked.

Angela put her palm to his forehead. “You’re warm.” She scooched her chair closer to examine his face. “Your pupils are dilated.” She seemed to be mumbling to herself more than informing Gabriel of his symptoms. She took his wrist and felt his pulse before asking, “Does anything hurt?”

He shook his head dazedly. Everything seemed fuzzy, like his head was stuffed with cotton. He could hear Angela, but her voice was far away.

“I’ll take you home,” Ana said, watching him like he was going to keel over any second. “You should lie down.”

He nodded. _Jack_.

Ana helped him out of his chair and he stumbled, but she caught him. They shuffled to her car, and she practically dumped him into the shotgun seat. He didn’t remember the drive back at all. He was mumbling the name under his breath. He felt if he stopped, it would slip away from him. For some reason, the thought of forgetting _this name_ was more than he could bear.

 _Jack, Jack, Jack_ …

Ana pushed him into bed and pulled the covers up to his shoulders. She hadn’t turned on the lights, and he was thankful. His headache had come back with vengeance.

“ _Rest_ , Gabriel.” She was at his bedside, but it sounded like she was calling to him from down the hall. “I will check in on you in a bit. Please sleep in the meantime.”

When he heard the door shut, he vowed he wouldn’t sleep. If he did, he would forget. He stared at the ceiling and whispered the name.

 _Jack_. _Jack_.

His eyes slipped shut. _Jack_.

 

* * *

 

He slept fitfully – he had dreamt about _something_ , but he couldn’t be sure what – and woke up with his heart in his throat, sticky with sweat and utterly disoriented. His room was dark, the blinds closed, and he had no sense of what time it was. He fumbled to throw off the blankets still clinging claustrophobically to his body before yanking the blinds open.

The room filled with light and he winced as he turned away from the window. It was not yet nightfall, thank god. He sat back heavily on his bed and dragged his hands down his face. What had happened?

His door swung open and he jumped. “Oh, you’re awake!” Ana shut the door softly and handed Gabriel a mug of coffee. He took it gratefully with shaking hands, nodding his thanks before taking a sip. She moved to feel his forehead but he ducked away.

“I’m _fine_ , Ana,” he said. “Just… tired.” He paused. “What uh, what happened?”

Her lips were pursed in a thin frown, but she held off on whatever lecture she had planned in favor of answering his question. “You suddenly became feverish during lunch. I brought you home and you passed out immediately.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “You were mumbling something to yourself the whole ride back.”

He was forgetting something. “What was it?”

She scrunched her eyebrows together. “It was a name. Jake? No…” She pondered for a moment longer. “Oh yes! Jack.”

 _Jack_.

He sloshed boiling hot coffee onto his hand. Ana rushed to help him, setting the mug aside and moving to find a towel, but he was numb. He stared blankly down at the angry red burn taking shape on his skin until it was covered when Ana threw a washcloth over it.

“Do you need ice?”

Her voice was far away. Gabriel shook his head. “Super soldier healing factor,” he reminded her mechanically. “Do… Do you know anyone named Jack?”

She hummed thoughtfully. “Not personally, no,” she confessed. “But I might have heard it in passing. One of the new recruits, maybe?” She laughed. “Overwatch used to be just the five of us, remember, Gabriel? You, me, Torbjörn, Reinhardt, Liao. And look at it now – it’s grown so big that most of our coworkers are strangers.”

Her words floated past and he grasped their meanings for mere moments before they had slipped away from him. He stood, rubbing at his itchy eyes. He took a step towards the door, but Ana blocked his way.

“Where are you going?”

“My office,” he answered flatly.

“Gabriel, you just _passed out_ in the middle of lunch.” She was tapping her foot impatiently. “I have been telling you for months, you _need to rest_.”

“Ana-“

“I am your second,” she reminded him. “Just take the rest of the day off and let me handle everything. Just one day, Gabriel.”

He considered pulling rank but Ana was glaring at him with a look that said she wasn’t above using her sleep darts on him. On top of that, she was right. It took a lot to knock out a super soldier. Maybe he was pushing himself more than necessary. Grudgingly, he relented.

“­ _Fine_ , fine, Jesus.” He sat back on the bed and pressed the heel of his hands against his eyes. “Just don’t forget about the-“

“I’ll get your schedule from Athena,” she interrupted brusquely. “Don’t worry about it. Relax. Watch a movie, take another nap.”  
He finally managed to shoo her out of his room by promising to stay in bed for the rest of the day. Yes, he would eat. No, he wouldn’t sneak paperwork on his tablet. It felt like another week before he was able to get her out the door. He was alone again at last.

 _Jack_.

The name came back to him in the silence. He buried his face in his pillow, huffing out a laugh. Ana was definitely right. If a random name that meant nothing to him was all it took to knock him totally off balance, he probably needed to examine his health a little more seriously.

All that time in SEP getting god knew what cocktail of illegal chemicals pumped into him to make him a superhuman, and here he was, bedridden because of a passing comment from a stranger.

Still, he was curious. He mulled it over for another minute before he snagged his tablet from the bedside table and rolled over onto back. He should at least look into it. Maybe the name was important, maybe it wasn’t. It couldn’t hurt to do a little digging.

He started by going through the Overwatch employee roster. He initially did a search for just “Jack,” but then remembered that it was also a common nickname for “John” and widened his search to include both names. There were a lot of hits, but none of the faces he scrolled through rang a bell. _Bauer, Marston, Reacher, Ryan, Snow…_

“Is everyone in this organization named Jack?” he grumbled to himself.

Next, he did an online search of any famous politicians or celebrities named Jack, but the results were even less helpful. It was a much more common name than he had realized. Frustrated, he closed the tab and opened up Netflix, resolving to forget about it. It was a waste of time, plain and simple. He was overworked and had a bad reaction to something earlier. He couldn’t even be sure it was the name he had responded to at all; maybe it was the tone of that stranger’s voice, or maybe it was the food, or maybe his brain had just decided to give out on him at that particular moment. There were endless explanations. He should focus on getting his wits back together.

 

* * *

 

_“You need to shape up, soldier.”_

_A wry smile. “Is that a challenge or a proposal?”_

 

* * *

 

“I _just_ took a day off,” Gabriel said with a scowl. “I have to get this done or it’s all going to just keep piling up.”

“That was three months ago,” Ana shot back. “ _Normal_ working people have at least one day off _a week_.”

“Yeah well, I don’t think anyone in this organization is normal.”

She waved a piece of paper at him. “I have a note from Dr. Ziegler. She agrees that it is medically necessary for you to take some more time off.”

He squinted at the note suspiciously. “What kinda threats did you have to make about letting her see Fareeha to get that?”

“ _None_ , thank you very much,” she replied, acid in her tone. “I actually didn’t even ask for it. She’s worried about you. Everyone is worried about you.” When he had nothing to say to that, she continued, “You _know_ I hate nagging you about this, Gabriel. You’re an adult who should be able to take care of himself. But-“

“But _nothing_.” He massaged the bridge of his nose and tried to think of a response that wouldn’t devolve into a shouting match. “I have deadlines, Ana.”

“Deadlines that you could meet much faster and with a lot less stress if you actually delegated tasks to capable people-“

“I _can’t_.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

He met her glare with tired eyes. He used to crumple under that gaze. “Get out of my office, Ana.”

Her shoulders drooped, expression softening with sadness. She nibbled on her lip, trying to think of something to say to him, before settling on, “I had better see you at dinner.”

He returned his focus to the papers in front of him and nodded absentmindedly. He waited until he heard the door shut to drop his pen and rub at his eyes. They were constantly itchy these days. When he removed his hands from his face, all he could see were black and white dots for a few moments. _I’m going to go blind, at this rate. Just like him_.

He winced at his thoughts. _Him_. He picked up his pen and began writing furiously.

_Don’t press too hard. You’ll hurt your wrist. He used to do that too._

His head hurt. There was a steady throb of pain in his temples. If he could just keep going, keep working, maybe he could distract himself from the incessant feeling that he was missing something.

 _You can’t forget him_.

His pen snapped in two and ink spilled out over his desk and fingers. He cursed and scrambled to get his papers out of the way. _Who is he?_ he thought furiously as he scrubbed at the drying ink with his sleeve.

_Jack?_

The fabric of his sleeve slipped on the ink and he knocked a mug off his desk. He didn’t hear it shatter.

 

* * *

 

Gabriel really did not want to be doing inspections today. He had managed to nap for two hours last night, and while that amount of sleep combined with several cups of coffee was usually enough to get him through a day alone in his office, dealing with people was a whole other can of worms.

Normally he had Ana inspect the new recruits, but her flight back to Zurich had been delayed by an unexpected snowstorm and there wasn’t enough time to debrief someone else on how to perform inspections, so it fell to him. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he waited for the recruits to march in, resisting the urge to rub at his eyes.

Angela stood next to him, going over a checklist she had on her clipboard. Once Gabriel was done surveying the recruits, she was supposed to perform some standard health checkups. He was glad she was there – a familiar presence he could latch onto so he wasn’t alone with his thoughts.

“Nice weather we’re having, commander,” she said, looking up from her list.

He hummed in agreement. He squeezed his eyes shut before reopening them, hoping it would soothe some of the irritation. It only helped for less than a second. His fingers twitched but he kept his hands clasped resolutely behind his back.

“Commander,” she began slowly, but he cut her off.  
“I’ve told you. Gabriel is fine.”

She nodded, emboldened. “Gabriel. Have you slept more than five hours a single night this week?”

He shrugged. He wanted to tell her his average was something closer to two or three, but he figured she wouldn’t react well to that so he held his tongue.

“If you need help sleeping, there is plenty of medication I could prescribe for you,” she went on when he didn’t speak.

He shook his head. “Pretty sure there’s nothing strong enough to knock me out, unless you wanna give me a dose of anesthesia large enough to kill a horse.”

She wrinkled her nose at the suggestion, as if it gave off a smell that was particularly offensive to her. “The effect that anesthetics have does not replicate sleep. It could make your sleeping problems worse in the long term.”

“No need to get so defensive,” he assured her. “I know.”

She huffed. “There are other methods, apart from medication.” She tapped her pen against her lips in thought. “Maybe you should talk to someone, discover the root of the problem.”

He was either too tired or not tired enough to deal with this conversation. “The recruits are coming.”

“We’ll talk more about this later,” she said, and it sounded like a threat.

He schemed about how to escape his next conversation with Angela as the recruits marched in. He let his eyes slide over each one as they entered, not really paying attention to any details but feigning eagle-eyed observation.

A short crop of blond hair stepped through the doorway and the floor slanted sideways. Angela’s firm hold on his arm kept Gabriel from visibly stumbling, but his vision went dark for a moment and he hoped his lapse in awareness wasn’t too obvious.

Judging by how Angela was scrutinizing him with that clinical frown, she hadn’t missed it. “Gabriel…”

“I’m fine,” he said through gritted teeth, frantically searching out the blond head that had disturbed him. When he found it, he couldn’t tell whether the breath he took was relieved or disappointed. The kid was unremarkable; pointed nose, dark eyes, military haircut. Indistinguishable from the rest of the pack. _Nothing like…_

“If you need to take a break,” Angela was saying, but he shook his head.

“Let’s just get this over with.”

 

* * *

 

 

_“It’s been awhile.”_

_He was laughing._

_“God, I missed you.”_

 

* * *

 

 

Gabriel didn’t usually have time to cook for himself and he was out of practice. He hadn’t ever been a genius in the kitchen, but he was good at throwing whatever was available together without much of a plan. The end results tended to be pretty good, but extremely difficult to replicate since he never recorded the process anywhere. There was one recipe he knew by heart, however: his mother’s chili. Served up with some cornbread, it was Gabriel’s go-to comfort food. No one made it quite like she did, but after years of watching her prepare it, he thought he came pretty damn close.

It was Fareeha’s birthday and Ana was putting together a small party for her. He was completely out of ideas for a birthday present, so he figured bringing food instead couldn’t hurt. It had been more than a year since he’d last whipped up a bowl of chili, but his muscle memory was good and he was fairly satisfied with the end result.

When he arrived at the party, Ana ushered him inside with a smile and a, “It’s good to see you out of your office, dear.”

“Good to _be_ out of my office,” he replied. He held up the bowl and added, “Brought some chili.”

She kissed his cheek as a “thank you” and whisked it away from him to set it on a table that already sported a variety of chips, dips, and small pastries.

Fareeha managed to disentangle herself from a slightly tipsy Angela and came over to hug him. “Thanks for coming!”

“Of course. Happy birthday.” He ruffled her hair and she laughed.

“I see you brought your world famous chili,” she said with a grin.

“Yep.” Her good cheer was infectious, and he couldn’t help smiling back at her. “I’d feel bad not bringing anything, and besides, it was always-“ He stopped cold. He had been about to say _Jack’s favorite_. “It was always your favorite,” he amended carefully, doing his best to prop up the smile that had been quickly melting away.

She pursed her lips. “You’re still not getting enough sleep, are you? I feel like I should kick you out to go take a nap.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s…” _Too dangerous._ Being alone with his thoughts was the worst possible suggestion. “I’d rather spend time catching up with you.”

She didn’t believe him, judging from the skeptical once-over she gave him, but she didn’t press the point. He rubbed at his dry eyes. He needed to pull himself together.

 

* * *

 

 

_“I love you. No matter what, I love you.”_

_“Yeah. Me too.”_

 

* * *

 

 

Gabriel leaned back in his chair, staring blankly at the computer screen in front of him. All the words on the report he was supposed to be reading were blurring together. Maybe it was time for a break. He switched to a media site and clicked on a livestream of the daily newscast. The reporter was totally bland, her brown hair pulled into a tight bun and her voice matching the exact same inflection that every reporter had. He stood, stretched, and let himself zone out while she prattled on about whatever was the latest.

_“… Now, moving on to our next story, today marks the anniversary of the mysterious death of John Morrison…”_

Gabriel nearly jolted out of his seat. He was suddenly wide awake.

_“Morrison, nicknamed Jack by those who knew him, was a promising young student at the military university that now houses Overwatch before he was tragically murdered five years ago. Due to a complete lack of evidence, the police department has finally announced that they will be closing the case...”_

A picture of Morrison was shown on the screen. Short blond hair, fair skin stretched over high cheekbones sprinkled with freckles, bright blue eyes covered by thick glasses that threatened to fall down his nose.

_Thinning hair touched with gray, crinkles around misted eyes, a smile that didn’t quite reach them._

Gabriel could taste bile on his tongue. He needed to sit down. His whole world lurched, and his stomach with it. He stumbled back into his chair, dazed, vaguely aware that he was bordering on hyperventilating. He blinked rapidly, and was startled to discover that his seemingly perpetually dry eyes were wet with imminent tears. He paused the newscast with a violently shaking finger and stared at the flat image of John “Jack” Morrison.

_“Gabe.”_

He anchored his elbows on his desk and covered his ears with his hands. Jack’s voice was an echo in his skull.

_“I missed you.”_

His heart seized up in his chest and his throat burned with acid. His palms pressed tighter against his ears but it did nothing to block out the voice that had haunted him all along.

 

Ana found him like that, trembling and sick with an illness he couldn’t name. She rolled his chair to face her and held his head against her chest as she made soft shushing noises to calm him.

When he finally looked up into her frightened face, all he could croak out was, “It was my fault, Ana, I killed him.”

Her bewilderment only grew. “Gabriel, what are you talking about?”

He jabbed a wobbling finger at the screen. “That kid, that kid, Ana, I know him, I…” His hand fell and he squeezed his eyes shut. “I can’t _remember_ , why can’t I _remember_?”

Ana must have thought he was losing it. He didn’t care. He _was_ losing it.

“Gabriel, you’re not making any sense.” She rubbed his back soothingly. “Breathe, just breathe, it’s okay.”

“He’s _dead_ ,” he was babbling, “he’s dead and it’s my fault, I don’t know why but it _is_ , why can’t I remember…”

“ _Gabriel_.”

“Jack,” he wheezed, his voice muffled by Ana’s shirt. The name felt like lead in his mouth. “Jack… Jack is dead.”

 

* * *

 

Gabriel was rapidly crumbling under his own weight. He’d been holding himself together with nothing but a few worn threads of reason for so long and they were starting to snap one after the other.

All the snippets of foggy conversations, all the glitches and skips in his brain had begun to take shape, molding themselves in the image of Jack Morrison. It was too seamless, the way Jack’s face merged into his cloudy visions. Every blond head he passed in the hallway briefly morphed into Jack’s, every guttural voice he overhead had him craning his neck.

He could handle the daytime hallucinations. They were wispy things and skittered away from his touch. He couldn’t stop them from seeking him out, but he could chase them away. It was what lurked in his dreams that frightened him.

If he had insomnia before, it was nothing compared to this. His dreams were gummy and viscous, clinging to his skin when he tried to wake. They were too familiar to be just his imagination, and yet too polished to be reality. Sometimes they were calm and syrupy, lips on his cheek and a warm body in his arms. Sometimes they were humid, dim lighting and opaque steam, naked skin sliding against his own and promises he couldn’t quite hear murmured into the shell of his ear.

It was the bitter dreams that scared him, though. The nightmares. The smog of angry words and teeth and scorch marks on his skin, encircling him, closing in, and no matter how he struggled, he was always suffocated by it all. This was usually when he was able to force himself awake, gasping for the air he had been denied. But sometimes, from the center of the swirling black death, he rose. He _was_ death. It bled from his fingertips and seeped like poison from his throat. There was a mirror to his left, and he always turned to look but the visceral terror of whatever he saw in his reflection always woke him before he could remember what it was.

Everyone was treating him like glass, like he would shatter if the wind blew the wrong way. As much as the thought made his blood curdle, he didn’t blame them. On top of dreading sleep, he had completely lost his appetite – an especially dangerous thing for a super soldier with an increased metabolism. To say that he was running on fumes was an understatement.

A month after his deterioration had begun to spiral rapidly, Ana, with the blessing of Gabrielle Adawe and the UN, was granted temporary status as Strike Commander. She assured Gabriel that, as soon as his health returned, she would step back down to being his second and his command would be restored. He had no doubt she was being genuine, but the idea that he would someday recover from whatever trauma he was suffering was unimaginable.

She would be good for Overwatch. At the very least, she would be a tremendous improvement over his increasingly lackluster leadership over the past year. But as happy as he was for her promotion, he no longer had his work to distract him. He begged – _actually begged_ – Ana to give him _something_ to do, anything at all, but she blatantly refused.

“You are not well,” she had said, and the pity in her voice made him recoil. “I cannot allow you to continue destroying yourself. Focus on getting better.”

He had no arguments that she wouldn’t be able to turn against him somehow. He had no choice but to accept her decision.

Angela was convinced the root of the problem was a mental health issue. “There’s nothing physically wrong with you, apart from experiencing symptoms of insomnia, appetite loss, and so on,” she explained. “You need to _talk_ to someone about this.”

He tried to refuse her but she pushed a card into his hand.

“ _Please_.” Her professional bedside manner had cracked and there was real distress in her eyes. “Please, at least try. If not for your own sake, for the sake of the people who love you.”

He glanced at the card. It was the contact information of an omnic named Zenyatta. He resolved to throw it out, but the card ended up gathering dust on his bedside table.

With absolutely nothing else to do, he turned to idly keeping himself busy with his childhood hobby of arts and crafts. It distracted him for a little while. He knitted hats and socks and scarves, he darned a series of little mouse toys for Fareeha’s new pet cat. It was when he decided to try his hand at painting again that the precarious stay he had on his degeneration began to pick up speed once more.

Being faced with a blank canvas was always daunting, so he hastened to slap some random colors on as quickly as possible. He let his ironclad grip on his mind slacken some, losing himself in mixing paints and gliding his brush across the canvas. It was relaxing, enjoyable even; it was a feeling he hadn’t experienced in nearly a year.

He was smiling when he stepped back three hours later. He had barely felt the time pass. His wrists were aching, but it was the satisfying sting of a job well done. His cheeks had started to hurt as well, out of practice as he was at making any expression that wasn’t misery. The smile dropped off his face as soon as he saw exactly what it was he had painted.

Thinning hair touched with gray, crinkles around misted eyes, a smile that didn’t quite reach them.

_“Stop fidgeting,” he snapped, smacking Jack’s hand. “You have to stay still while I’m painting.”_

_Jack scowled back at him. “Or what?”_

_“Or I’ll make you uglier than you already are.”_

_“Impossible.” Jack snorted. “Anyway, I don’t give a shit about my attractiveness, I can’t see it._ You’re _the sucker who has to look at me all day.”_

_“Yes, because I’m definitely with you for your lovely personality.”_

_A wry grin split Jack’s mouth. “You got me there.”_

 

Gabriel had painted this before.

 

_“Seriously, I have a meeting in like-“_

_“Just humor me for five more minutes.”_

_Jack huffed but thankfully cooperated._

 

He couldn’t see.

 

_“Gabe-“_

_“It’s done, Jesus. I just finished.”_

_“Finally.” Jack jumped to his feet. “Can I see it?_

_A moment of hesitation. “Yeah.”_

_He was smirking as he walked over. “What, did you give me a unibrow or somethi…” He trailed off, strong jaw going slack as he stared. “Is… Is that a ring? Did you paint me with a ring?”_

_A nod._

_His hand came up to cover his mouth. “Gabriel Reyes. Are you proposing to me? With a painting?”_

_“If- I mean, yes, but-“_

_His hand fell and his smile was small, shy, but his eyes sparkled with it. “It’s nicely done and all, but I’d rather have a real one to show off.”_

 

He stumbled, suddenly drenched in cold sweat.

 

_“You never did ask me properly, did you?” Jack mused later, examining the simple band around his finger._

_“You still said yes.”_

_“I know, but…”_

“Then marry me, Jack Morrison.”

A death sentence.

 

* * *

 

It had taken another month of arguing with himself before Gabriel picked up his phone and dialed the number on the card Angela had given him.

“Greetings,” answered a peaceful synthetic voice. “Is this Gabriel Reyes?”

“Yeah.” He had practiced what he wanted to say earlier, but his little script had conveniently disappeared from his mind as soon as he was supposed to say it. “Um. Zenyatta, right? Angela said you could… you could help me.”

“Indeed. I have been expecting your call for some time. Dr. Ziegler has told me quite a bit about you.”

His throat was dry. He rubbed at his eyes. “She tell you I’m a nutcase?”

“Not quite.” Zenyatta’s chuckle was robotic, but the sound somehow came across as more genuine than anything Gabriel had heard a human come up with in awhile. “She said you were suffering primarily from insomnia brought on by mysterious hallucinations that began a little over a year ago. Is that correct?”

“Pretty much,” Gabriel relented. “She seems hell-bent on getting me to talk to someone, she’s convinced it’ll fix me.”

“Whether or not you recover is up to you, Mr. Reyes,” Zenyatta said. “I am merely available to guide you.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Meditation?” Gabriel repeated, giving the omnic floating in front of him a dubious once-over.

“Yes,” Zenyatta confirmed.

“I don’t know.” He shifted on the couch. “I thought you were just gonna ask me how everything makes me feel, like a regular shrink.”

Zenyatta’s face remained as serene as ever, but somehow Gabriel got the sense that he was being laughed at. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Reyes, but I gather that you would not be here if you were able to articulate what you are feeling.”

Gabriel shrugged. “You’re pretty sharp.”

“All that I ask is that you extend a little bit of faith towards my methods,” Zenyatta continued. “If it does not work, we can try something different.”

“Fine.” Gabriel leaned forward and rubbed at his temples. “What first?”

“First, sit or lie down in a position that is optimally comfortable,” Zenyatta instructed. Gabriel sighed, deciding he might as well give this his all, and reoriented himself so he was lying on the couch on his back. “Now, you may either close your eyes or focus your gaze on a single point.”

Closing his eyes was probably a bad idea, given his overactive imagination. Gabriel settled on staring at a thin crack in the ceiling.

“Your mind is a machine,” Zenyatta went on. “It generates thoughts and feelings of its own accord. _You_ are not those thoughts. _You_ are not your mind. Let go of it. Allow your mind to work unrestricted. Instead of attempting to control that which cannot be restrained, rest. Focus your energy on merely watching it work in peace.” As he spoke, Zenyatta’s orbs thrummed with a calming frequency. “Thoughts will pass you by. Do not reach out to them. Observe them, but let them be. Do not attach yourself to any one of them. They are not you, and you are not them. Do not try to remake them in your image, or incorporate them into yourself. To do so is to judge their purpose. Exist beside them instead. Be in harmony with them. They cannot change themselves any more than you can change your soul.”

Zenyatta continued to speak in the same manner for an indeterminate amount of time. As he talked, Gabriel’s eyes drifted shut. Something about the rhythm of the electronic hum of the orbs slowed his breaths, steadied his pulse. His hold on his brain relaxed, just as how it had when he was painting, except this time he wasn’t ignoring his thoughts in fear of being beholden to them. He floated, idly watching his passing inner mantra proceed without him. They were simple, fleeting things – an itch on his nose, the dull ache in his spine from sleeping incorrectly, lingering annoyance at someone who had bumped into him earlier, an intangible fear of his future. He had never felt so at peace.

 _Jack_.

His heart seized up. Frantically, he tried to push the name away, tried to grasp the calm from before, but the more he struggled, the further it ran from him. Panic settled over him, seeped under his skin, beat his pulse wildly inside him.

“Mr. Reyes,” Zenyatta said, loudly but without any urgency.

Gabriel’s eyes shot open and he bolted upright. “What-“

Zenyatta passed a faintly glowing orb into his hands. “Breathe.”

Gabriel focused once more on the frequency of the orb and his breathing stabilized after a minute. “What happened?” he demanded, knowing his anger was misdirected at the omnic.

“It is normal for a particularly emotionally charged thought to disrupt one’s meditation,” Zenyatta replied smoothly. “It takes much training and self-reflection to master the art of allowing these thoughts to pass by. However, you should be quite pleased, Mr. Reyes. Not many disciples of the Iris are able to meditate for so long on the very first try.”

Gabriel mulled over that for a moment before asking, “So I’m not cured yet?”

Zenyatta shook his head. “Not yet. I am afraid it is highly unlikely that you will be able to find a quick solution to your problem. Nevertheless, based on this first session, I can confidently say that, provided you are willing, practicing meditation will improve your condition over time.”

Gabriel nodded slowly, unsure of what to say.

“Today’s session is over,” Zenyatta said. “Rest, and think on your experience.” He tilted his head, and Gabriel got the impression of a smile. “Am I to expect your return tomorrow?”

Gabriel grunted. “You know what, might as well.”

 

* * *

 

 

The pieces fell into place. They moved as if submerged in tar, but they were clicking together, slowly, one after the other.

As he meditated, sometimes he saw memories that were not his own. They travelled by him innocuously, the same as everything else, but it was always harder to let them go. For the first few weeks, they immediately disturbed him and made further meditation impossible. As time went on, however, it became easier and easier to remain calm.

He found that the more he left them alone, the less they assaulted him in return. He felt like he was taming rabid dogs, teaching them to trust him by holding his hand out gently instead of grabbing them by the collar and muzzling them. Rather than coming at him with fangs bared and flashing claws, they started to greet him quietly with a gentle nudge. A suggestion instead of a demand. _Remember_.

It started small. A hint of a scent he didn’t recognize deciding to identify itself as a cornflower. _Like the color of his eyes_ , his mind reminded softly. Picking out a constellation in the night sky he had never studied. _Like the stars on his skin_.

As he assembled the puzzle pieces, he remembered Jack Morrison.

He remembered a Jack with gravel in his voice and the dry sense of humor to match. He remembered a Jack with gray streaks interrupting the smooth blond of his hair, a Jack with stress lines on his face, scars carved into his body and into his heart. A Jack with a grin that was raving mad and a smile that was shy without practice.

A Jack he loved. A Jack that was impossible.

He reread the article every few days, checking and rechecking the facts. Jack Morrison was dead at twenty-one years old. The life that Gabriel remembered could not have happened. This _could not be_ his Jack.

In addition to this logical quandary, his nightmare still haunted him. The fog of death hung over him when he convinced his body to sleep and dogged his dragging footsteps when he was awake. As skilled as he was becoming at meditation, everything screeched to a halt when faced with the mirror in his vision. Sometimes, his dream-self wouldn’t even be able to approach it out of sheer terror. When he was able to peer into it, whatever he had seen was frightening enough to be blocked from his conscious recollections.

He finally brought it up with Zenyatta, desperate to get to the bottom of it.

“There is a question in your dream,” Zenyatta said after a moment of consideration. “There is a truth you are seeking, and it lies in the mirror. You wake because it is a difficult truth. You must learn to treat the truth as you do your thoughts: not as something to be feared, but to be accepted. Whether you are aware of it or choose to remain ignorant to it, the truth will still exist and it cannot be changed. Let it be, and it will not hurt you.”

“And how do I do that?” Gabriel asked.

Zenyatta hummed. “We can attempt to induce a lucid dream. It is a tricky process, but you have been improving remarkably over these past few months. You may be able to succeed.”

Gabriel was instructed to lie on the couch and was given an orb to hold.

“The key to a lucid dream is becoming aware that one is dreaming without waking up,” Zenyatta explained. “Dreams are a labyrinth; upon wading in, one needs a spool of thread to find the way out. When you fall asleep, this orb will emit a particular frequency. It should manifest in your dream in some way, such as a flickering light or a sound. First, become acquainted with the signal. Learn to recognize it. Then, when you are in your dream, find it. Let it be your thread to the waking world. It should give you the guidance to not look away when you are faced with the mirror.”

Gabriel shut his eyes and felt the faint pulse of the orb in his hands. He matched his breathing to it, let it cycle through his veins like blood. He drifted, drifted, and then fell unconscious.

 

 _Pain. Burning, lancing through his charred body. Circling him, closing in, asphyxiating him. Writhing in it until he crumbled. Disintegrated away into the blackness. Then rising, reforming, death incarnate. Lacing himself back together around his poisoned soul, thrumming softly with the life he was not supposed to have. Every particle fought to reconnect, fought the sheer_ corruption _of his existence, buzzing with his stolen sentience, spitting in the face of the natural order-_

 _The wavelength of his particles was familiar. The image of a golden orb flashed before him._ A dream _, he realized._ That’s right.

_He looked to his left, and sure enough, there it was. A mirror, set in an intricately carved wooden frame. The mirror he remembered from his childhood, the mirror his mother always scolded him for getting fingerprints all over._

_He took a step forward. His unstable body threatened to collapse, but he took another step. It_ hurt _. The pain shot through every fiber of his being. He stepped forward._

_Don’t look._

_He looked._

_Reflected back at him was an owl skull. The void seeped out threateningly from its eye sockets and its edges were sharp. Its surface was white, blindingly white, and the flecks of dark red blood that stained it stood out in contrast._

 

Gabriel opened his eyes and stared blankly at the thin crack in the ceiling.

The blood was not his own.

 

* * *

 

_“Find anything important?”_

We used to love each other. _“No.”_

 

* * *

_“You could have_ died _.”_

_A shrug. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”_

 

* * *

_“Maybe_ you _were the monster all along. Maybe it was always_ you _.”_

 

* * *

 

 

It was coming back to him.

His nightmare had shifted; instead of leading him to a mirror, it showed him a fading jacket and a corpse soaked in a pool of blood. He pushed, and was surprised when his dream gave instead of pushing back.

The angry words. The figure – _Jack_ – kneeling, looking down the line of his rifle.

 _Move. Faster,_ move.

He never moved fast enough. The shot rang out before he could lift a finger.

_“What have you done?”_

Jack’s face, older, world-weary, but at peace for the first time in countless years.

Gabriel remembered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to hit me up on twitter or tumblr by the way! I'm firesonic152 on any given website pretty much d(owo)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a little spotify playlist for all the songs that make me think of this fic because yeah I'm one of those people who only thinks about my ships when I listen to music. Aren't we all. Anyway, here it is: https://open.spotify.com/user/firesonic152/playlist/2RjXeBCH01hFLEkTs54YZ4
> 
> Also, slight gore warning near the end of the chapter - Gabriel has a nightmare and it isn't graphic, but just in case you get REALLY squeamish, stop reading at "Jack didn’t move. 'Hey. Look at me, Jack.'" and pick it back up at the next line break.

Gabriel set the barbell down, his hands beginning to quake as soon as he relinquished his grip. He wiped sweat off his forehead with his towel before throwing it around his neck. His vision swam for a moment, and he had to steady himself against the wall. It felt like every muscle was on fire. He could barely move his legs, and he was fairly certain that once he sat down, he would be unable to get up again.

He couldn’t hold back a satisfied smile. _Good_.

He stumbled back to his room from the exercise center, having to take a break every once in awhile when the black dots darting in front of his eyes began to blot out everything. As soon as the door shut behind him, he tossed his shirt into some corner and collapsed face-first on his bed. It was agony, maneuvering his body so his head could meet the pillow, but he managed. His fingers found the tiny device he had hidden under it and flipped it on. It began to buzz in consistent, gentle patterns. That final chore done and thoroughly exhausted, he shut his eyes and let himself fall unconscious.

 

_Sunlight carried on a dry breeze, baking pavement beneath his feet. A crowd of busy people jostled him as they passed by, but he didn’t move. Sweat beaded along his forehead and rolled down his neck, but the heat was familiar instead of oppressive. The city was buzzing with life around him-_

The buzzer under his pillow.

_A dream. He looked around and recognized Los Angeles, his home. A place he had always wanted to show Jack._

Show me Jack.

_His surroundings shifted and he waved his hand in front of his face to clear away the fog. He was standing in his childhood home. The living room was exactly as he remembered it, with the old rug his mom had always swore she would replace someday and the well-worn couch that made up for its ugliness in the softness of its cushions._

_Jack sat there, legs crossed like a pretzel, looking around uncertainly with his hands fidgeting in his lap. Warmth rose up in Gabriel’s chest as he approached._

_“Relax, Jackie, my mom already loves you.”_

_Jack frowned. His lips were so pretty, jutting out like that. “I know, I know, it’s just, you know…” His shoulders sagged. “I want to make a good impression.”_

_Gabriel was a weak man. He sat beside Jack and encircled him in his arms, unable to help feeling giddy when Jack turned to nuzzle into the embrace._

_“You’d have to work pretty hard to make a bad one at this rate,” Gabriel assured him. “I’m pretty sure my mom would rather have you for a son than me.”_

_Jack huffed a voiceless laugh through his nose. “I think_ my _mom feels the same about you. Maybe we should switch.”_

_Gabriel nearly made a comment about how that wouldn’t be necessary if they just got married and became their respective mothers’ son-in-laws, but he bit it back. It was too soon in their relationship to be talking about a subject like that, especially when he was fairly sure he wouldn’t even be joking. He had no clue what Jack thought about it. Instead, he opted to run his hands through Jack’s messy hair and contemplate yet again how lucky he was to have this man in his arms._

_They sat in comfortable silence, the sleepy sun still warming the back of Gabriel’s neck even though they were inside. He kissed the top of Jack’s head, and Jack pulled away a bit so he could meet his lips properly. Everything was soft. He was laying on his back now, one hand behind his head and the other resting on Jack’s waist while Jack dozed on top of him. His eyelids were heavy, but he didn’t want to close them for fear of missing out on Jack’s peaceful face, the sweet way his freckled cheek was smushed against his chest and the glow of the light through his hair._

You love him.

_The room was cold. Gabriel shivered and sat up, holding Jack tighter against him. A figure stood in the corner, half melted into the shadows. It raised its head and its hood slid back, revealing the white owl skull beneath it._

 

Gabriel jolted awake, his heart in his throat. Despite the unadulterated terror that had gripped him, he refused to open his eyes, instead curling around his pillow, clinging to the image of Jack’s contented face, the weight of Jack’s body on his. Maybe if he held the pillow close enough, it would be able to clot the gaping wound that had been ripped through his core.

 

* * *

 

 

“Hey!”

Gabriel looked up from his sandwich, and was greeted with Jesse McCree’s blinding grin.

“It’s been awhile, boss,” Jesse said, tipping his hat. The boy had certainly grown up since the last time Gabriel had seen him; his beard had finally been given enough time to grow in properly, and he’d filled out so that he no longer looked like he was going to drown in his eccentric clothing.

Gabriel nodded in greeting, eyes flicking down to confirm that, yes, Jesse was in fact still wearing the BAMF belt buckle. He considered objecting to being called “boss,” since he didn’t have much of a position at all anymore, but settled instead for, “I see your fashion sense hasn’t gotten any better.”

Jesse laughed. “Like you’re one to talk,” he replied, gesturing at Gabriel’s ratty gray shirt and loose sweatpants. The smile faded a bit. “How’re you doing lately?”

Gabriel shrugged and took a bite out of his sandwich to avoid speaking. No doubt Jesse had already had to listen to Angela worrying over him like a mother hen.

When the silence stretched on too long, Jesse spoke again. “I, um. I just heard that you’ve been training a lot lately. And, well, I’m not due to go on another long-term mission for awhile, so-“

“Spit it out, Jesse.”

“We could- Maybe we could train together?” He took off his hat to card through his thick mop of hair. “Like old times?”

Gabriel watched Jesse’s fingers fidget with the brim of his hat and sighed. “Did Angela put you up to this?”

Jesse flinched and returned his hat to his head so he could put his hands up in surrender. “Ya got me,” he admitted. “I reckon you’ve been logging more hours training in one day than most recruits do in a whole week. Angie asked me to make sure you ain’t overdoing it.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Gabriel growled, setting his sandwich down on his plate before he crushed it by accident.

“I know, boss, but…” Jesse was frowning now, his facial hair doing little to disguise the pout he had used so frequently when he was a baby-faced teenager. “Look, we’re all worried about you.”

“I’m _better_ ,” Gabriel insisted. “I can handle myself. What else am I supposed to do, when no one will trust me with a goddamn job? I can’t just sit on my hands while everyone else is running themselves into the ground.”

“There ain’t nothing wrong with needing help,” Jesse said cautiously.

“I already _got_ help.” Gabriel could hear his voice rising in pitch, so he forcibly pulled it back down. “I saw the monk Angie told me to see. He did his job. What more do you want from me?”

Jesse’s shoulders sagged. “Right. I, uh.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the door. “I gotta go. Mission debriefing with Ana.”

Gabriel nodded and watched Jesse scurry away. He leaned back in his chair and had a brief stare-down with the sandwich before deciding he had lost his appetite.

 

* * *

 

_“It’s really grotesque,” Jack said, his nose wrinkling as he looked up at the giant statue of himself._

_“And here I thought you weren’t in it for the glory.”_

_“I’m_ not _.” Jack shoved him playfully and Gabriel laughed. “I didn’t want this stupid thing built, it was such a waste of our budget. But the UN overruled me, as usual.”_

_“Well, I’m not going to be complaining about getting to see your face every time I look out the window.”_

_“Sap,” Jack grumbled. “It barely even looks like me, anyway. I’ve had bags under my eyes since I was ten.”_

_“I don’t know about that.” Gabriel smirked and stalked around to the back of the statue, where its long duster coat flared in the imaginary wind. “They got your flat ass right.”  
Jack snorted, apparently too startled by his own amusement to hold it back. “You would know.”_

_Gabriel could feel the adoration bubbling up inside him. “Seriously, this replica is_ too _good. Is there something you’re not telling me?”_

_Jack’s smile suddenly turned sinister. “I don’t know. There’s gotta be something off. Why don’t you come over here and compare it to the original?”_

_Gabriel wasted no time crowding Jack up against the tall pedestal base and kissing the breath out of him. Jack keened, settling his hands over Gabriel’s where they had rested on his waist, and tugged them down to his ass._

_Gabriel reluctantly pulled away from Jack’s mouth to remind him, “We’re in the middle of a public lawn.”_

_“It’s almost midnight, no one’s gonna see.” Jack’s lips were already getting bruised and puffy from being thoroughly kissed, and they only made his smug grin all the more attractive. “Unless that’s what you were hoping for.”_

_“_ Me _?” Gabriel moved down to nip at Jack’s neck. “_ You’re _the one always pulling me aside for make-out sessions in the hallway. I actually wait until we’re in the comfort of our own room before starting shit.”_

_“Mm, you never say no though.”_

_Gabriel decided kissing Jack again was a better use of his time than bothering to respond. Jack seemed to think so too, if the way he opened his mouth to it and whined low in his throat was anything to go by._

_He was warm and happy here, pressed up against Jack like they were bound together, no one around except them and the crickets, who were happy to provide a suitably romantic background tune._

_A shiver ran up his spine and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. There were eyes on him. He’d had enough experience with being watched to know._

_He craned his head to look back and the figure was there, its black hood pulled low over the bone-white mask, silently observing from several feet away. It tilted its head, and the movement was jarringly familiar._

 

When Gabriel woke, he turned his face into his pillow and tried to will himself back to sleep. It was no use. The dream was gone.

 

* * *

 

Even after seeing Zenyatta for six months and gaining relative control over his visions, Ana refused to let Gabriel back into the field. It took several weeks of complaining about going stir crazy before she finally relented a little and okayed him for a desk job.

“Temporary Strike Commander” his ass. Ana seemed to be determined to keep him out of official Overwatch business as much as possible. He knew it wasn’t because she was power-hungry, though he would suspect it of many others. In fact, he was certain that she despised the position. It was endless amounts of paperwork and making tough decisions that would result in being yelled at by _someone_ , whether it was the press, the UN, any number of world governments, or just people online who didn’t know what they were talking about. Who in their right mind would _want_ a job like that?

In fact, when the UN first came to him with the offer, he had been all ready to staunchly refuse until he realized that _someone_ had to do it, and he would rather not pass on a death sentence to one of his friends. He supposed the fact that Ana was holding onto the position with an iron grip so he wouldn’t have to deal with it was a testament to how worried she was about his health.

_Jack never slept for more than a few scarce hours at a time. His hair had gone fully white by the time he was twenty-nine, and the lines under his eyes looked like they had been carved into his skin with a knife._

Gabriel’s heart ached at the memory. Right – in another life, Jack had been Strike Commander instead of him. Jack had carried everything on his own shoulders.

 _And it crushed him_.

Gabriel rubbed at his eyes and tried to focus on the papers in front of him. After all the nagging he had to do to get this job reviewing mission reports and summarizing them for the Strike Commander, the least he could do was pay attention. He had asked for this so he would have a distraction from constantly struggling with his memories; it wouldn’t do to spend that time daydreaming about the very problems he wanted to escape, even if for just an hour or two.

There was a part of him – most of him, admittedly – that wanted to be lost to his dreams. Every cell in his body _ached_ to be with Jack. The only time he felt at peace anymore was when he forced himself to sleep and he remembered. But as soon as he woke up, it was the same sad story every time. The loneliness, the disassociation, the visceral sensation of his flesh pulling at the seams.

The worst part was that, in his waking hours, he could never quite remember all the details. He clung to the feel of Jack’s skin, the warmth of his body, the rough quality of his voice. The shadowy figure that always ended it. But most of the details faded, no matter how fiercely he tried to hold on.

He knew, objectively, that he was insane. The small, rational part of his mind was telling him to find footholds in reality and cling to them with all his might. So he tried again to make sense of the reports in front of him, using the texture of the paper in his hands and the solid weight of his desk as an anchor.

He was already certain that, as soon as he had fatigued himself to his limit and carried himself to bed, he would fall willingly – _desperately_ – back into Jack’s ghostly arms.

Something had to give.

 

* * *

 

_He was sitting on the edge of their bed, hands clasped together. The room was dark, but for a single lamp on the bedside table. The simple band around his finger glinted accusingly._

_Heavy footfalls. He looked up. Jack stood in the doorway, the light from the hallway behind him throwing his face into shadow._

_“Gabe, the UN, um…”_

_“I heard. Promotion to Strike Commander, right? Congrats.”_

_Jack was twisting the ring on his own finger as he approached. “I thought- I thought I should talk to you about it.”_

_“What is there to say?”_

_“I’m… I know this isn’t how we expected it to go, but I think-“_

_Gabriel stood to meet him and cut him off with a chaste kiss. “It’s okay,” he said, and Jack frowned. “Really. You’re gonna be great.”_

_Jack was still turning the ring like it burned. Like it was strangling him._

_“Okay,” he said, smiling with his lips though his eyes were dark. “We still have some champagne left over, right?”_

_Gabriel ruffled Jack’s already-mussed hair and managed a grin. “We_ always _have some champagne left over, sweetheart.”_

_That managed to wrangle a soft sound of amusement from Jack as he went to get the glasses while Gabriel fetched the half-empty bottle from the refrigerator. Jack set the flutes down on the kitchenette counter and Gabriel poured. They toasted, Gabriel playfully sticking his pinky out as he sipped and relishing in the tiny smile it pulled from Jack._

_And yet, despite the sweet domesticity, there was a sense of foreboding in the air. Gabriel shifted nervously as he watched the alcohol swirl in his glass, trying to process the knot in his stomach into something articulate. “You know, Jack…”_

_He stilled when he looked up. The figure was there, watching them from the bedroom doorway, as if to mimic Jack just a few moments ago. It leaned casually against the doorframe, arms folded, one clawed finger tapping out the seconds against its bicep._

Wake up.

 _Gabriel shook his head. The urge to run from his dream was tugging at his subconscious but he refused it._ Not this time.

_“Who are you?” he asked._

_The figure tilted its head. The same familiar movement. Studying._

_“The Reaper,” it answered, its voice more a mess of vibrations than the genuine article._

_“Why have you been watching me?”_

_The Reaper shrugged. “Curiosity.” Something flashed in the void of its eye sockets._

_Gabriel set his champagne down and leaned back against the counter. “You don’t want me to remember this. Jack.”_

_The Reaper rumbled out a menacing laugh. “Now where did you get that impression?”_

_“Every time you show up, the dream ends.” Gabriel crossed his arms as well. “Why don’t you want me to remember?”_

_It was shaking its head, as if in amusement. “Not exactly,” it corrected him. “You’re just remembering the wrong things.”_

_“What does that mean?”_

_It seemed to consider its words for a moment. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” it finally said. “You’ve been quite selective about what you see in these dreams of yours. Your sentiment has made you forget all the heartache.”_

_It stood straight and swept its arm out to the side. The scene shifted in response; the same little apartment, but everything was a mess. There were papers strewn about the floor, and there was a worrying layer of dust blanketing the dining table. How long had it been since they had eaten together, at that table?_

_Gabriel saw himself, heaving with anger, staring with frightening intensity at something on the carpet._

_“We’re done.”_

_Jack’s face, warped with purple splotches under his puffy eyes and his lips twisted around a violent scowl, the faint freckles on his cheeks hidden under smears of an angry red flush. Gabriel stepped closer, to be beside himself. The ring glinted up at them desperately from the floor, as if pleading with them to stop._

_“Get out, then.”_

_Gabriel’s head spun. He couldn’t make out what was going on, or even who had said what. The Reaper flicked his wrist and it went back a little further._

_“You think I can’t handle it!” Jack shouted accusingly. “You_ never _thought I could do it! From day one, you wanted me to fail so you could take_ my _job!”_

_Gabriel’s voice was quiet, cold rage. “Morrison, of all the birdbrained ideas-“_

_Jack was shaking his head furiously. “I don’t want to fucking hear it from you. It’s_ constant _, Gabriel,_ everyone _is out to get me, but I thought at least_ you _were different-“_

_“It should have been me, Jack,” came Gabriel’s icy reply._

_Jack drew himself up, eyes molten and red. There was a horrible silence as he tore the ring off his finger and threw it to the ground. The carpet muffled the sound of it landing, only making the mute tension more gut-wrenching. “We’re done.”_

_Gabriel watched his body go completely rigid. He was choking._

_“Get out, then.” The command was whispered. Underneath it, there was a plea._ Don’t go.

_“All he does is hurt you,” the Reaper said, its reverberating voice cutting through the unnerving hush. “He betrayed you.”_

There’s something wrong.

_“No,” Gabriel said._

Something’s wrong.

_“Everything is his fault,” the Reaper growled._

_“_ No _.” Gabriel felt sick._

_The Reaper’s clawed fingers came up to his grotesque mask and pulled it away. Gabriel covered his mouth with his hand, willing the bile to slither back down his throat._

_His own face stared back at him from under the black hood, but it was a monstrous distortion of his image. His skin was missing in patches, and had been completely blown away from the left side of his jaw, revealing too many rows of sharp teeth. Several black eyes with red irises split open on the other cheek and his forehead, distracting from the numerous open wounds that oozed a thick, black liquid._

_“He did this to me,” the Reaper hissed. “He did this to us.”_

_Gabriel shook his head. The panic rising in him was making it hard to concentrate._

This is wrong.

_The acrid scent of smoke and burning flesh assaulted his senses. He was screaming without a voice. Half his body was buried under rubble. He couldn’t see, he couldn’t breathe-_

_“He left you do die.”_

No.

_“He left you to become a monster.”_

No!

_“I should have been Strike Commander.”_

_Gabriel’s breath came back to him all at once._

_“No,” he said. “No, that’s wrong. I didn’t want it. I never wanted it.”_

_He was sitting in a needlessly uncomfortable chair, his fingers steepled in front of him on the table. The UN goons stood around him in neatly pressed suits with clipboards and tablets in their hands._

_“That is what we envision the role of Strike Commander to be,” one of them was saying. Her ponytail was pulled so tight it was any wonder her forehead could still move. “A leader who can bring us forward into a future of peace. And we want you, the man who carried humanity through the Omnic Crisis, for the job.”_

_Gabriel leaned back, drumming his fingers on the table. “I’m gonna be blunt and say it seems like you’re looking for a figurehead, not a leader,” he replied. “You want a scapegoat to hide behind.” When the woman looked like she was going to argue, he held up his hand. “Not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Every big organization needs one, especially when it’s international like this. It’s going to piss off somebody, no matter what you do, and you need someone to take the fall for you so you can keep doing what needs to be done. I get it. But it’s not gonna be me, sorry. Find some other poor sap.”_

_A shift. He was in the rec room, perched on the edge of the couch as he watched a Lakers game. Ana stormed in and stood in front of the TV, her hands on her hips._

_“Hey,” he started, annoyed that she was blocking the game, but she cut him off._

_“They chose Jack.”_

_His blood ran cold. “What?”_

_“Jack is going to be Strike Commander.” She was looking at him as if begging him to come up with some source that said otherwise, some way to deny it was true._

_“No…” Gabriel’s head was spinning again. “No, they can’t do that to him.”_ Not to Jack. _“He said yes?”_

_She nodded gravely. He fell back against the couch in shock._

_“They’re going to tear him apart,” he whispered. He sat up for a moment, trying to think of something to say, and then hunched over, holding his head in his hands._

_He felt the couch dip as Ana sat next to him and put her hand on his back. “It’ll be okay, Gabriel,” she assured him, though she didn’t sound convinced of it herself. “He can do it. He is strong and brings out the best in people. He’ll be a fine Strike Commander.”_

_“I know,” Gabriel said into his hands miserably. “I know. But at what cost? It’s going to crush him, Ana. And it’s my fault. I turned it down. It should’ve been me.”_

_A shift. He was back, clinking his champagne flute against Jack’s._

_“You know, Jack…” He fidgeted with the neck of his glass. “You don’t have to do this. The UN asked me first. You could still say no, and I could take-“_

_Jack’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying, Gabe?”_

_Gabriel knew, immediately, he had made a mistake. “You’re going to be amazing,” he said, trying to pre-emptively dissuade doubts about his faith in Jack. “I’m so proud of you. I know you deserve to be the face of peace. But it’s a hard job, Jack, it’s almost certainly going to end poorly, and-“_ I’m scared. I’m so scared. It should have been me.

_“I get it,” Jack interrupted him, but his brow was furrowed with frustration. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”_

_Jack wasn’t fine. He worked and worked, consistently foregoing sleep to get a few extra reports done, still leading missions when he could afford the time between press conferences and government meetings, overseeing recruit training and meeting with the scientists about new developments whenever he had an open hour in his schedule. He poured his heart and soul into Overwatch, became the leader it truly needed._

_But it was killing him. Gabriel’s heart ached at the sheer exhaustion that poured from him, the debilitating anxiety and stress that came with every new decision that crossed his desk, the resignation in the thin line of his lips with every scandalous news report that damned him for his latest call. Between Gabriel’s guilt and Jack’s fatigue, they were drifting further and further apart. They hadn’t slept in the same bed for weeks – Gabriel wondered when the last time Jack had slept in a bed at all was._

_“It doesn’t matter,” the Reaper cut in between the memories with a snarl. “He still didn’t trust me. He used me. He dropped me into the dark so I could do his dirty work the first chance he got.”_

_“No,” Gabriel said. He remembered._

_“Please, Gabe.” Jack’s voice was careful, tender, but his eyes were hard. “I can’t do this without you. I need you on my six. Blackwatch is…” He hesitated, the politician in him turning the gears in his brain. Thinking through the best phrasing. “I need someone I can trust, unconditionally.”_

_“Someone who won’t stab you in the back for handing them the keys to Overwatch’s backdoor.”_

_“Gabe-“_

_“Calm down, dumbass_. _I didn’t say no.”_

_Jack’s eyebrows rose, taken aback. “I…” He smiled, exhaling in relief. “Thanks.”_

_If Gabriel couldn’t take Jack’s place, then he would ease his burden. He would dirty his hands with espionage and hostages and sabotage so that Jack wouldn’t have to. He should have been Strike Commander. He shouldn’t have left Jack to rot in that glorified prison of job. But maybe he could make up for it, if only just a little, by taking the fall for the worst of it. If he was court-martialed and executed for what Blackwatch might have to do, so be it. As long as it wasn’t Jack’s head on the chopping block anymore._

_“He left me to die!” the Reaper screamed._

_“No!” Gabriel replied, gritting his teeth._

_Black. Everything was black and pain, like fire, like ice, like a lightning bolt tormenting every nerve. He was shattered glass, he was shadow. He was Death._

I should have been Strike Commander.

_“Jack Morrison was killed in the explosion,” came a clinically precise voice from a person he couldn’t see. “As were you.”_

_Jack was dead. It should have been him._

_“You should have been Strike Commander, isn’t that correct?”_

_Yes._

_“Jack Morrison took it from you, did he not?”_

_No. That’s wrong._

_“Jack Morrison betrayed you. He stole the position that should have been yours.”_

_Was that right? He couldn’t remember._

_“Talon rescued you from oblivion.”_

_Yes._

_“Jack Morrison left you to perish. But we brought you back.”_

_Yes._

_“Jack Morrison made you into a monster, and a monster was what we found. But we can save you from his curse. We can make you human again.”_

Yes.

_“No,” the Reaper said, and the anguish in his voice startled Gabriel. He looked and blood was trickling out of every gruesome eye, like wicked tears._

It was for Jack, Gabriel realized. It was always all for Jack.

The Reaper crumpled into black dust and Gabriel woke up.

 

* * *

 

 

Gabriel wasn't sure how he survived the next day. Despite how long he had slept – a full ten hours, longer than he had slept in _years_ – his eyes were burning like he hadn’t closed them for days. He thought his head was hurting because it kept throbbing, but he was too numb to tell if there was any pain.

It felt like he was underwater. When people spoke to him, it was a distant warbling sound he couldn’t quite understand without the information being repeated for him multiple times. He must have appeared as awful as he felt, because Ana took one look at him when he walked into her office and told him to go back to bed immediately.

To his credit, he tried following her orders. He went back to his room, threw off his dress shirt, and fell into bed. After an hour of rolling around uselessly, he dragged himself back out of his room and down to the shooting range. The mindless motions of aim-shoot-reload-repeat let him keep his hands busy without having to expend the mental energy he didn’t have.

Just as his hands were starting to cramp up, Athena informed him that he had been at this for several hours and it would be a good idea to take a break. He mumbled his agreement and wandered back to his room to attempt sleep again.

When he crawled under the covers, he was finally able to fall unconscious.

_The Reaper came to him, almost sheepishly, his two human eyes sunken and downcast._

_“I wanted to be Strike Commander,” Gabriel said. “To protect Jack.”_

_The Reaper nodded._

_“I died in an explosion,” he continued. “Because I couldn’t save Jack.”_

_The Reaper nodded._

_“I became you.”_

_The Reaper’s form shuddered with that final nod._

_“I forgot.” The Reaper’s fangs, visible through the hole in his cheek, clenched. The edges of his body were shivering, outlined in static. His claws curled into themselves, anger twisting his many monstrous eyes as they bled smoke. “They made me forget.”_

_“Talon?”_

_The Reaper erupted into dust and Gabriel covered his face. When he looked again, they were in a sterile white room. A puddle of black mist lay quivering on an examination table. Faceless doctors stood over it, speaking without words._

Focus.

_The features of the doctor in the center became clearer, though they were still too blurred to be distinctive. The incoherent babble started to separate into words._

_“…mind…”_

_“…remember?”_

_“...uncertain…”_

_The fog began to knit together until it was viscous goo. The doctors’ conversation became slightly more intelligible._

_“…useless to us if… its former identity and loyalties...”_

_“…mind was essentially wiped clean…?”_

_“…remains responsive to emotional stimuli…”_

_“…need to exploit this.”_

_“…done it before, turned a few arguments into…”_

_“…convinced the widow to assassinate her husband.”_

_“We just take the negative feelings that are already…”_

_“…give them a new origin?”_

_“Exactly.”_

_“…should go deep.”_

_“Jealousy?”_

_“…the promotion could…”_

_“We need this to last…”_

_“We need a feeling that will trigger…”_

_“Betrayal.”_

_“Some reconditioning is in order.”_

_On the word “reconditioning,” the entire room began to shake. The doctors didn’t seem to notice. The puddle on the examination table writhed, syrupy tendrils struggling and reaching out from the mass, trying to take shape, and then collapsing back. It seemed to grow, oozing outward until it had covered the whole room in a shifting dark sludge._

I should have been Strike Commander. Not Jack.

_Good._

I shouldn’t have let him take it.

_Pain, excruciating pain. Wrong._

He took it from me.

_Good._

I wanted to protect him.

_The beginnings of agony. Incorrect._

I wanted to protect him and he spurned me.

_Good._

It was all my fault.

_False._

It was all Jack’s fault.

_Good._

_The black started to melt away. It coalesced in front of Gabriel, and arose into the Reaper once more. Jack stood beside him, hair bleached white and face covered with a faintly glowing red visor._

_Thin strings pulled on Reaper’s limbs. Gabriel looked up and saw that they were held by the doctor. The strings turned Reaper on Jack, agitated him into a black swarm of fury. “You turned me into this!” he screamed. He took Jack’s face in his hands, horrible claws screeching as they met the metal. “But maybe you were the monster all along. Maybe it was always you.”_

_At their feet, Jack, blond and naïve, lay in a pool of his own blood, blue eyes glassy and lifeless._

_The strings snapped and Reaper fell to his knees with a spine-chilling howl. He was dissolving, clawing at his face as patches of black sand crumbled away from him._

_“Save him,” Reaper pleaded, his speech so garbled from his rapid disfiguration that he was almost incomprehensible. “Jack… Save Jack.”_

_He reached out with a melting hand, white bone poking out from the oily black smoke as it dripped into the void. There was something clasped in his skeletal fingers._

_Gabriel held out his palm and it dropped into his grasp as the last of Reaper scattered apart. A small blue energy core, with a date carved into it._

 

* * *

 

 

Gabriel was empty inside when his eyes slid open. He was having trouble breathing. It took him a moment of watching his ceiling before he realized it was because he was hyperventilating. He lifted his hand and let it fall limply over his chest, felt the way his heart was hammering under his fingertips.

_Save Jack._

His throat was tight and his face hot, like he was crying, or meant to cry – but his eyes were dry. He reached for a pen at his bedside table and scratched _5/15/42_ clumsily into his palm. He closed his fist around it, and then opened his fingers. The numbers had smudged a little, but they were still readable. He made a fist again and held the date against his chest.

 _How_ , he wanted to ask. How was this date supposed to help him save Jack? It was _years_ ago, it wasn’t like there was anything he could do about it now.

_Unless…_

He sat up so fast that his head spun and it felt like a hot knife was being plunged through his forehead. He yelped and hunched forward, squeezing his eyes shut while he waited for the vertigo to pass. When it subsided, he snatched up his tablet and silently thanked god when his Strike Commander passcode still allowed him access into the more secret Overwatch archives.

Frantically, he searched through the newest recruits for the strike teams until he found her. Lena Oxton. He clicked her profile, and then clicked through to the science division’s report about her.

_“Subject suffers from chronal disassociation, on account of a teleportation matrix malfunction that occurred while flying at extremely high speeds in the Slipstream fighter plane prototype. The subject’s molecules have been desynchronized from the flow of time, causing her to fade in and out of existence for inconsistent spans of time.”_

He skimmed down a little further.

_“Subject has been anchored to the present by a new device we call the chronal accelerator. In addition to stabilizing her physical form, this device allows the subject to control her interaction with time, such as by speeding herself up or slowing herself down. The implications of small-scale ‘time travel’ are massive, but it is the opinion of Dr. Winston that further investigation into the matter could lead to catastrophic discoveries and it is best left alone.”_

Gabriel couldn’t read anymore, and he wasn’t sure if it was because the room was spinning again or if his hands were shaking so much that the text on the screen had become illegible. He set the tablet aside and crushed his palms to his eyes until white and black dots were sparking in front of him. Time travel. Of course.

 _This is a terrible plan_.

 

* * *

 

 

Ana was furiously typing something into her datapad when Gabriel entered her office. She held up a finger without looking away from her writing, signaling for him to wait a minute. After a final triumphant click of the spacebar, she steepled her fingers and met Gabriel’s eyes.

“You wanted to see me?” she asked in lieu of a greeting. Gabriel suddenly realized it had been awhile since he had _really_ looked at her. She seemed older, deep lines around her mouth and eyes along with the streaks of gray and white running through her formally coal-black hair betraying her stress.

It emboldened him in his choice. “I want to be Strike Commander again.”

A flicker of relief eased her tight expression for a moment, but it was gone when she sighed and rubbed at her temples. “Gabriel…”

“This was supposed to be temporary until I could get my shit together again,” he argued. “I’m _better_ , Ana. I slept ten full hours the other night. Ask Athena.” It was a restless ten hours, but she didn’t need to know that. “If I still can’t do it, then you can have the job back. But at the very least, you deserve a break.”

She studied the large stacks of papers strewn about her desk for a moment before her eyes flicked back up to Gabriel. “Fine.” Gabriel started at the positive response – he had been fully expecting to be denied. Before he could thank her, though, Ana held up a hand and continued. “We can move you up to be my second-in-command for now. If you prove yourself capable once more, then, and _only_ _then_ , I will end my term and return your title to you.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. When do I start?”

“Now.” She smiled hollowly as she handed him a mission file. “What do you know about Null Sector?”

 

* * *

 

 

Jack was watching him again.

He wasn’t really there. He wasn’t _real_ – Gabriel knew that much, at least. In fact, Gabriel never even saw him, not truly. The ghost only appeared when he was focused on something else, registering as a flicker in his peripheral vision and vanishing as soon as he turned to look.

He didn’t know how he could tell it was Jack when he had never actually _seen_ the shadow. Maybe it was wishful thinking. But then, it was all in his head to begin with, so he trusted his brain when it told him the hallucinations it was producing were about Jack.

But yes, Jack was there again, Gabriel was sure of it as he sat at his desk, reading diligently through the latest intelligence reports. He could feel the eyes on him. He didn’t bother to look up. He knew nothing was there.

“You could at least say something,” he groused to the air. “I’m doing this all for you. God knows a ‘thank you’ wouldn’t hurt.”

Jack didn’t speak. When Gabriel finished reading, he shuffled the papers into a neat stack and turned his chair, only to be greeted by an empty room.

His hands did not shake as he rubbed at his eyes. “You’re welcome,” he mumbled.

 

* * *

 

 

Null Sector was a bigger beast than any of them could have foreseen. It was a year of tough decisions and backlash from every angle. The UN and its world governments wanted Overwatch to stay as far away from the situation as possible, but both people and omnics alike were _dying_ and Overwatch couldn’t turn a blind eye. Sometimes they abided by the UN and stayed out of it, which always led to public outcry that Overwatch was just more useless bureaucracy, willfully ignoring people in need. Sometimes they ignored the UN and tried to help where they could, which led to even more scathing press about how Overwatch was corrupt and shouldn’t take agency away from the very nations it was trying to help. Ana handled everything as gracefully as she could, but there was only so much damage control that could be done. It was impossible to please everyone – at first.

While Null Sector threatened countries all over Europe, the worst of it was in England. It took a lot of avoidable tragedies to occur across the European continent before the British Prime Minister would even consider talking with Ana, but eventually the Strike Commander was able to arrange a secret meeting and convince him that working _with_ Overwatch was the best way to handle the attacks.

The Prime Minister was an old and bitterly spiteful man, and persuading him that he needed help to deal with Null Sector was not easy. Ana had no choice but to give him an ultimatum.

“Your people are dying,” she told him, her voice even despite the tension in her hands, clasped carefully behind her back. “Your _country_ is dying, and Overwatch cannot ignore it. We are going to combat Null Sector, whether you approve or not. You have a choice, Prime Minister. You can refuse to work with us and be seen as weak in the eyes of the world when you are unable to protect your country, nor control an outside organization operating within your own borders.” She smiled thinly. “Or, you can sanction us and claim all the glory when we win.”

There wasn’t much argument to be made against a threat like that. The old man caved and Overwatch was finally given the permission it needed to operate in England without public opinion becoming _too_ harsh. On top of that, with every victory Overwatch pulled off in England, the rest of Europe became increasingly agreeable until they were more or less united against Null Sector.

“Nothing brings people together like a common enemy,” Ana said between mouthfuls of coffee as she looked over mission proposals.

Gabriel nodded in agreement. Despite the obvious toll on her mental health, Ana was flourishing as Strike Commander. He was certain that no one else could have so skillfully orchestrated an international alliance amidst the chaos. He _almost_ felt bad that he was trying so hard to take the title back, until he reminded himself that she hadn’t wanted it in the first place.

He tried to remember what Jack had done in this situation.

 _Blackwatch_ , he realized with startling clarity. Neither he nor Ana had ever instated Blackwatch. The idea was kicked around for a while but, lacking anyone they trusted to run it, they had ultimately decided against it. For Jack, though, the scandal that was kicked up when Blackwatch’s existence was leaked had made it impossible for him to get Europe to cooperate with Overwatch.

 _Because he trusted me,_ Gabriel thought numbly. _Blackwatch was created because he trusted me. And I took the job because I wanted to ease his burden, but in the end, I ruined him._

After a year and a half of wrangling world leaders and taking out Null Sector bases, the burgeoning Second Omnic Crisis was finally put to rest. It took another year for Ana to come up with a recovery plan and set it in motion. Between everything that was going on, she couldn’t possibly afford to pass the leadership of Overwatch on to Gabriel until the situation had been settled.

Two and a half years. Gabriel worked diligently as her second for two and a half years. Most of it was spent brainstorming, taking on the paperwork she couldn’t get to, running the base while she was gone, or training new recruits. But he also spent some time in the field, first directing the strike teams that Ana couldn’t, and then overseeing the recovery of the places that had been hit the worst, like London.

It was grueling. But every time Gabriel felt the presence of Jack’s ghost at his back, it fortified his resolve. He could do this. For Jack, he could do anything.

And finally, _finally_ , the press conference came. Ana announced that it had been an absolute honor serving the world during such a difficult period in history, but the time had come for her to pass the mantle back to Gabriel. There was a little ceremony, a formality for the sake of the media. It barely registered for Gabriel; it was over in a heartbeat, and soon enough he was trudging back to his room, thoroughly exhausted from all the excitement.

For the first time in a while, he went to bed with a smile.

 

* * *

 

_“Don’t do this.”_

_Gabriel sat up in his bed, blinking vainly as he tried to see in the dark. Everything beyond his bedframe was pure black, but a figure sat beside him on the mattress._

_“Jack,” he said. His breath came out in a mist._

_Jack didn’t turn to face him. He sat at the very edge of the bed, feet planted firmly on the floor and hands clasped together, his naked back to Gabriel. It was difficult to tell in the dark, but his hair was thin and white._

_“This has gone far enough,” Jack said, his voice a low rumble in the quiet. “Forget about me, Gabriel. Just move on. Live your life.”_

_“You know I can’t do that,” Gabriel replied._

_The muscles in Jack’s broad back tensed. “You must.”_

_“Why?”_

_“This world is happy,” Jack said simply. “You can be happy.”_

_“Not without you.”_

_Jack’s shoulders rose and fell with a heavy sigh. “You’ve met him, haven’t you?” he asked. “The Reaper.”_

_Gabriel nodded slowly._

_“You can escape that fate.” Jack’s voice was almost too soft to hear. “You don’t have to become a monster.”_

_Gabriel laughed. “I’m offended,” he said. “You think I wouldn’t destroy time for you if I had to?”_

_Jack’s head dropped lower. “Gabriel, you have to let me die.” It was supposed to be a command, but his tone was pleading._

_“Look at me,” Gabriel said suddenly. Jack didn’t move. “Hey._ Look _at me, Jack.”_

_Jack turned. Two bleeding lacerations split his face open, dark and wet, a flash of white bone barely visible beneath it all. His eyes were glassy and pale, set in bruised, purple skin. There was a single bullet hole in his forehead, singed around the edges and oozing thick black mud._

_“I’m dead,” he said flatly. “Let me_ go _.”_

_Gabriel shook his head, unable to tear his gaze away from the morbidly fascinating tracks of blood that were forming on Jack’s ashen skin as they seeped from his wounds._

_“No.”_

_Jack’s face twisted in anger, the gashes splitting wider. “_ Let me die. _”_

 _Gabriel grit his teeth. “_ No _.”_

_Jack screamed as his head was cleaved apart, gore splattering Gabriel’s cheeks. Black smoke gushed from his remains and took shape in the air. Gabriel was pinned to the bed as silver talons curled around his throat._

_His eyes met the Reaper’s, and he grinned. He could taste the iron in his mouth._

_“I’m not afraid of you.”_

_The Reaper’s mask creaked and splintered, revealing a gruesomely wide mouth full of too many rows of teeth. It matched his grin._

_“Good.”_

_It peeled away his skin with its fangs and sank inside Gabriel’s body. The pain felt like it belonged._

 

* * *

 

Upon being reinstated, Gabriel’s first order of business as Strike Commander was to meet privately with Winston.

“I want to talk to you about your breakthroughs involving the chronal accelerator,” Gabriel said, cutting right to the chase.

Winston adjusted his glasses nervously. “What about them, commander?”  
Gabriel took a breath. This was it. All his hard work had brought him here, to have the authority to ask this question. “Time travel. Do you think it’s possible?”

“Well…” Winston seemed to be considering his words carefully. “Traveling forward in time has been a proven possibility for-“

“What about going back?” Gabriel cut in. “Time traveling to the past – could we do it?”

Winston frowned, eyeing Gabriel with suspicion. “I can’t conclude anything for certain,” he said slowly, “but it is something we can look into. However, I cannot stress enough just how dangerous-“

“I know.” Gabriel waved his hand nonchalantly. “But can you create a device that would allow people to travel to the past?”

Winston didn’t answer for a moment. He fixed Gabriel with a steady gaze, the wheels turning in his head.

“My respect for the natural order obligates me to say no,” he replied finally. “But my scientific curiosity begs me to try.”

Gabriel couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. “Excellent. Pick a team of your most trusted associates and get it done. And not a word to anyone else, of course.”

“Understood.” Winston hesitated. “Strike Commander, I must ask – what do you plan to do with this machine, if we are able to build it?”

Gabriel’s smile grew. “Nothing you wouldn’t do, Doctor.”

 

* * *

 

It was past midnight when Gabriel called Ana to his office. “Come in,” he called when he heard the faint knock at his door.

She entered, wearing a nightgown and a grimace. “There had better be a good reason you wanted to meet with me on my one night off at,” she checked her watch, “12:36 AM.”

“Of course,” he assured her. “Come, sit – champagne?”

She sat opposite him, folding her hands carefully in her lap, and squinted at the champagne flute he was holding. “You’re in a good mood.”

“Not at all.” He hummed as he poured her a glass and slid it across the desk. She didn’t touch it.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” she asked.

“I was thinking about…” He thought through his wording for a moment. “Retiring.”

Her eye darted up to meet his, alarm clear in her face. “What?”

He leaned back in his seat and twirled the flute between his fingertips. “It’s been a few years since you passed Strike Commander back to me, and I have to say, I don’t think I’ve been doing nearly as good a job.”

“Gabriel, this is… so sudden.” She was frowning. “Why?”

He thought about the device Winston had delivered to him a few hours ago, sitting innocently in his desk drawer. “I’ve just been doing some thinking.” He drained the rest of his glass and then grabbed the bottle to refill it. “You’ve been handling most of the important conferences and running point lately anyway,” he continued as he poured. “Maybe it’s time.”

Ana didn’t look convinced. “And is there another, less rational reason?”

He considered telling her the truth. He couldn’t think of a way to make “I’m going back in time so I can stop this version of events from happening” sound anything less than insane. He settled for, “I’ve been having dreams again.”

“About?”

He hesitated for another moment, and then admitted, “Jack.”

It was the first time he had spoken Jack’s name out loud since he had discovered it all those years ago. A thrill ran through him at the feel of it passing over his lips into the air.

Ana’s furrowed brow softened into a look of pity. “Gabriel. I thought you had gotten past that.”

“I’m not asking you to understand, Ana.” He peered into his glass as he swirled the champagne around. “I just wanted to tell someone before I left.”

“Before you left,” she repeated, and Gabriel realized his verbal misstep. “You make it sound like you’ll be running off in the night.” When he didn’t deny it, her eye widened. “ _Gabriel_ …”

“I’m not,” he fumbled to come up with an explanation that wasn’t a complete lie, because Ana would see through it instantly, “I’m not running away. I’ll see you again before you know it. I just have something personal to take care of, and I need to know that Overwatch will be okay without me while I’m gone.”

“Are you going to tell me what this personal something is, or am I going to have to guess?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “I can explain it to you after. But for now, you’re just going to have to trust me.”

Ana deflated, a deep sadness in her face. She reached for her champagne flute and downed it. “Just come back alive, Gabriel,” she warned as she set it back down.

Gabriel nodded. “Always.”

 

* * *

 

The time machine was so little, Gabriel mused as he started it up. Such a fragile device had caused all of this devastation.

A movement on the edge of his vision caused him to look up. The moonlight coming through the window cast dark shadows that reached into the corners of the room. Jack stood there, the watery light playing off his hair and throwing his scarred face into the gloom.

Gabriel could feel his heart unclench at the sight. Something like a smile tugged at his lips.

“It was always you,” he said to the specter.

The machine whirred to life, bathing everything in a faint blue glow, and then Gabriel was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Winston has a doctorate okay
> 
> Feel free to hit me up on twitter or tumblr! My username is, as always, firesonic152 d(owo)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that text post on tumblr that’s like “if a future version of myself hasn’t come back in time to tell me not to do this, how bad of a decision can it be?” Well.
> 
> Also here’s the chapter where the title of the fic actually becomes really important! I hope those of you out there who have played or watched Life is Strange the game are drawing parallels – and those of you who haven’t, I hope I’ve convinced you to give that game a shot, even if it’s for no other reason then the fact that you can be a lesbian!

“Maybe _you_ were the monster all along, Morrison. Maybe it was always _you_.”

Gabriel could hear the Reaper’s mangled voice faintly through the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to shake off the dizziness from his trip through time so he could focus on figuring out where it was coming from.

“Understood.”

Jack’s voice, clipped and distant, jarred Gabriel out of his concentration. It was the first time he had ever heard it outside his dreams. It was the same sandpaper sound he remembered, covered with a thin synthetic layer.

_The voice that had always been accompanied by a glassy, faraway look in his eye and an inability to comprehend anything unrelated to the work directly before him._

Gabriel’s breath caught in his throat. This was it. This was the exact moment Jack had made the decision that changed everything.

He was moving before the thought to do so had fully formed. He dashed around a corner, skidding on the slippery floor, and bolted towards the munitions storage room, tucked innocently away from the hall.

He yanked open the door and came face-to-face with his nightmare.

The bone-white owl mask tilted as they stared at each other in silence. Unlike the voids in Gabriel’s dreams, there was something churning deep in those empty eye sockets. He wasn’t sure how he could tell that there was movement at all, amidst the lightless black, but the motion of it threatened to make him ill.

Everything was coming up at once. _You killed Jack_ , he wanted to scream. _You let Talon get in your head and you killed him!_ His knuckles were aching with how tightly he had his fingers driven into his palms. He wanted to shatter that stupid mask with his fists. _How could you forget?_ He wanted to demand an answer. _I never forgot how much I loved him, even when I couldn’t remember his name. How_ dare _you forget?_

His hands flew to the thick fabric at the front of the Reaper’s coat and yanked him closer. He rammed his forehead into the mask’s, bore his eyes into the vacant sockets, and snarled, “ _Go after him_.”

The Reaper was still at first, considering in silence. “Why?” he finally asked, voice warbled and tattered at the edges.

Gabriel had never hated himself as much as he did in that moment. “Why?” he repeated, seething. “ _Why_?”

The _years_ he had spent ripping open the hole in his chest every night, aching for Jack, the torment of loving someone he had never met so deeply, the insanity, the sickness he had carried with him in his bones, the mornings he woke up with a scream that died in his throat and choked him until he bled tears – all of it rushed through his veins in a heartbeat, and this wraith asked _why_.

“You don’t get to ask me that,” he hissed, the fury inside him squeezed thin in his larynx and strained between his teeth.

The Reaper didn’t reply immediately, but the whir of his nanites spun the air around them and made his body seem to froth and blister with heat.

“He betrayed me,” he finally said, and Gabriel knocked him hard against the wall.

“You _selfish_ -“ Gabriel only barely held himself back from going on a swear-ridden tirade. “I don’t have time to argue with you,” he growled instead. “You just- you _have to go after Jack_. You can’t lose him over this, _not this_.”

He pulled the Reaper away from the wall and pushed him in the direction of the door. The Reaper stumbled and glanced back, looking suddenly like a kid in a Halloween costume instead of a harbinger of death.

“Take this.” Gabriel thrust the time machine instructions into the Reaper’s hands. “Now go,” he said again, urgent, giving the Reaper’s back another shove for good measure. “ _Run_.”

As soon as his fingers withdrew from the Reaper’s coat, they began to fade. He watched the Reaper’s retreating figure until the wraith had turned a corner and was out of sight.

Gabriel studied his fingers as they disappeared and, for just a moment, the cold hand of fear gripped him. This was it. He had made his choice.

A movement on the periphery of his vision made him smile, breaking the deep-set line of his jaw, and the ice in his chest eased.

 _For Jack,_ he thought fondly. _For Jack, I can do anything._

 

* * *

 

 

Reaper shoved the crumpled paper into his pocket and stepped tentatively out into the hallway. For all the questions that he thought he should be having, his mind was a blank slate.

He was trying to remember the anger he felt towards Soldier, but it was getting difficult to grasp. When he tried to recall why they had argued, all he could think about was the pain he had witnessed in Gabriel’s face – his own face.

He walked slowly, watching his feet as he put one in front of the other.

_Save Jack._

He could hear his own voice in his head, pleading, corrupted with emotion.

_The loneliness, the disassociation, the visceral sensation of his flesh pulling at the seams._

Memories that were not his own were starting to trickle into his head – except that they _were_ his. His feet were moving faster.

_Jack’s face twisted in anger, the gashes splitting wider. “Let me die.”_

_“No.”_

Faster, _faster_ -

_Jack, kneeling, looking down the line of his rifle. Jack, lying in a pool of his own blood as it seeped out from his head._

He was running now, the world a blur as it passed by.

_I love you. No matter what._

_Yeah. Me too._

Gabriel yanked the mask off his face and didn’t look back as it clattered to the floor behind him.

It felt like within moments he had flown to the rooftop door and was shoving it open and _there_ , there was Jack, standing on the far end of the roof, his pulse rifle by his feet, his broad back tensed as he looked out onto the street below. It had been mere minutes since he had last seen Jack, but to Gabriel, it felt like it had been a decade – and maybe it had been. He didn’t move right away, out of breath from running and taking in the fact that Jack was right there, in front of him, with relief.

Jack seemed to startle at the sound of Gabriel’s presence, and started to turn. His face was still covered by the visor, but there were creases in his forehead and a tightness in his shoulders, a question in his posture. Gabriel stalked forward and Jack took a step back, perhaps expecting a fight.

When Gabriel reached out, Jack put up his hands, as if to block an incoming punch. It didn’t come. Gabriel reached past his guard and gently removed the visor. Jack’s eyes were pale and wide beneath it, his mouth open in clear confusion.

“Hey,” he started to say, but Gabriel dropped the visor to the ground, threw his arms around Jack’s shoulders, and kissed him.

Jack’s hands, trapped between their bodies, fisted in Gabriel’s coat as he wavered, as if about to topple over. Gabriel held him tighter, half in fear of Jack slipping away, slipping right through his fingers, just like before.

When he broke the kiss, he didn’t let Jack go. One hand went up to the bump of Jack’s spine just under his neck while the other went down to the dip in his lower back, to pull Jack closer, flush against him. He buried his nose in Jack’s neck and did his best to hold back the tears forming behind his eyes. He could feel Jack’s pulse point there, beating steadily, perhaps a little faster than normal but _alive_ and he wanted to engrave the wavelength of it into his skin.

Jack was shaking. “What are you doing?” he rasped, his course voice no longer obscured by the mechanical filtration in his visor.

Gabriel didn’t know where else to start except with an apology. “I’m sorry,” he said, not bothering to hide the distressed, guttural sound of his nanites barely holding together enough to form speech. “I’m sorry Jack.”

Jack laughed, but it was thick, more miserable than anything else. “Let me go.”

 _“Let me die,”_ came the words from his dreams and Gabriel’s fingers clutched frantically at Jack’s back.

“No,” he said, a little too harshly.

Jack began to struggle. His palms pushed uselessly at Gabriel’s chest, his pulse a frenzy as he fought. “Let me _go_ ,” he repeated, feverish, voice cracking on the last syllable.

Gabriel wanted to give Jack space, but the very thought of it brought back the sensation of his hand passing through Jack’s transparent skin and he clung to Jack’s solid form in his arms.

“ _Why_ ,” Jack sounded choked up, “after what you said-“

“I know,” Gabriel said softly. It wasn’t enough. Words weren’t enough. But they were a start. “I didn’t mean-“

“You _did_!” Jack shoved particularly hard at Gabriel’s chest, and he let go. There were angry red splotches blooming in uneven patches across Jack’s face, and his pale pupils flashed in the dark of his hooded eyes. His feet were spread, knees bent and forearms raised once more, like he was ready to start throwing punches. “What did you call me? A monster?”

“Jack-“

“You were _right_!” He spat the words like he was coughing up blood. “You were right, okay? I fucked up.”

“Jack,” Gabriel tried again, but Jack’s thin lips twisted to show his teeth and the scar running through them bent unnaturally.

“I fucked up!” he repeated. “I-“ He ran a hand through his hair, causing it to stick out at wild angles. “Jesus Christ, Talon blew up our headquarters!” He swept his arm out to the side, gesturing at the buildings around them. “This entire section of Zurich, all those innocent lives, wiped out because I couldn’t swallow my pride for one goddamn second and _listen_ to you. I _ended_ our relationship, I-“ Something seemed to fracture inside him at that, as his eyes began to shine a little too bright. “I didn’t trust you enough,” he forced out, like he was being strangled. “I got so- _paranoid_ , the whole world was pouncing on every little thing I said and, and Jesus, Gabe, we were supposed to get _married_.” His whole body sagged at that. “It’s all my fault.”

That struck uncomfortably close to the lies Talon had ingrained in his head. Gabriel’s heart felt like it was being squeezed into pulp. “It wasn’t. Please, Jack, I can’t watch you do this to yourself.”

“Then don’t,” Jack snapped. “Just-“ He curled his fingers into his thinning bangs, rounding his shoulders and coiling in on himself like he was trying to hold himself together. “I can change it… I can fix it. Just _let_ me fix it.”

“Jack!” Gabriel clasped Jack’s shoulders, but Jack didn’t look up. “Jack, this isn’t the answer.”

Jack finally looked up and his sightless glare dripped poison. “How would you know?” he hissed.

“How would-“ Gabriel made a smothered sound that only barely qualified as a laugh. “How would _I_ know? Jack, I _watched_ you die!”

The rage in Jack’s face finally seemed to freeze up in favor of confusion, the harsh downturn of his eyebrows easing at the corners. “What?” He stared at Gabriel blindly in the face with wide, glistening eyes. “You,” he seemed to struggle to get the words out, “what?”

Gabriel was vaguely aware that his fingers were digging into Jack’s shoulders too hard – his claws were piercing the thick fabric of the man’s jacket – but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Jack’s dying breath, the way everything else fell away because the only thing that mattered was that he was _too late_ , was too fresh a memory.

“I was stupid- God, Jack, I wasted so much time, by the time I got here you were already taking the shot and then-“ He was babbling, near incoherent, but it was all such a soupy gray mess in his mind and he _needed_ Jack to understand the panic still throbbing through every muscle and every vein in his body. “I had to watch you _vanish_.” His voice broke on the last word. “Everything changed, I… _Years_ , Jack, the years I dreamed of you, torturing myself for falling in love with a man who didn’t exist, I felt like- Jack, I was insane and I didn’t even _care_ , I just _wanted_ you, I didn’t care what it took, I worked so hard to get here, to stop you, and…” His head was too heavy. He dropped his forehead onto Jack’s shoulder and didn’t bother stemming the hot tears bubbling onto his cheeks. “Jack, I have lived a life without you,” he croaked. “I can’t… I’m never letting you go again.”

He could feel the movement as Jack shook his head. “No,” he said, almost toneless in his disbelief. “That’s… That’s crazy, I…” He took a stuttering breath. “I can _fix_ it,” he insisted again, reedy and thin. “I made… I made so many mistakes, I can undo it all right here-”

“No, Jack, _listen_ to me,” Gabriel cut him off. “You can’t- you can’t just run from your choices like that.”

“I _can_.”

“ _No_.” He lifted his head to look Jack in the face and raised one of his palms to cup Jack’s cheek once more, this time mindful of the talons on his glove. “Please,” he tried, desperate, “please listen. Life is- life is about making mistakes. It doesn’t matter how many you make as long as you learn from them.”

“I didn’t,” Jack whispered, his eyebrows pushing together and shadowing his eyes.

“But you _can_.” Gabriel smoothed his thumb across Jack’s cheek. “You can because it’s not over yet.”

“It could be,” Jack offered humorlessly.

“It _won’t_.” _Because I don’t think I could do it again_ , Gabriel wanted to say. But this wasn’t about him. It was about making Jack understand that he needed to _live_. “Jack, we- we both fucked up, okay, we probably have more regrets than anyone else alive right now, but that doesn’t cancel out your value as, as a _human being_ who deserves to live.”

“Most people don’t regret ruining the world,” Jack retorted.

“Quit worrying about the goddamn rest of the world and worry about _yourself_!” Gabriel lashed out. If Jack refused to listen to simple reason, then Gabriel would just have to spell it out in blunt, bitter language that even he would comprehend. “The rest of the world doesn’t care, okay? You think you made a difference? You think you were _important_? You _weren’t_ , Jack.”

Jack flinched, the bridge of his nose wrinkling as he tried to come up with a response, but Gabriel didn’t give him the chance.

“The world thought you died in Zurich and it kept right on spinning,” he went on furiously, his volume rising with every word. “Hell, when you didn’t _exist_ , it didn’t matter, the sun still rose every morning. The universe _doesn’t care about you_.”

He stopped and took a breath. Jack was staring resolutely at the ground.

Gabriel nudged his face back up and continued, softly, “But… But _I_ do. The universe is a big place, Jack. No single one of us is going to make a difference to it. But you made a difference to _me_. So, so stop worrying about what you’ve done to the world, or what the world thinks of you, because it doesn’t matter. Worry… Worry about yourself.”

Jack was biting at his lip. “Gabe…”

“It’s okay to make mistakes,” Gabriel said, trying as best he could to get the nanites in his vocal system to produce something warm. “The universe is gonna just keep marching on without even noticing. In the end, what’s really important is… is you. What _you_ make of your choices, what _you_ learn from them, for better or worse. I…” He smiled, though he knew Jack wouldn’t see it, and tipped his forehead forward to touch Jack’s. “I made my choice, Jack. I don’t want to give up on everything I went through with you. I don’t want to forget it all.”

His breath hitched and he had to take a second to catch it.

“I spent so much- so much _time_ running from our past and all it got me was a cycle of empty hatred. I got so tangled up in the mistakes that I didn’t bother to understand them – why they happened, where we went wrong – so I couldn’t escape them. I want to be able to look back on my time with you, I want to be able to live with the choices I’ve made. I want to accept them and grow with them. It’s… I think it’s time for me to take responsibility.” He pressed a gentle kiss to Jack’s mouth and ended with a hushed, “Will you help me?”

“ _Gabe_ …” Jack really was an ugly crier, Gabriel thought, as Jack’s face screwed up in the effort to hold back tears, the erratic red on his cheeks spreading and his mouth contorting into a shaky line. But it didn’t matter. As long as he was alive, right here where Gabriel could hold him, he was beautiful.

“What do you say, sunshine?” he asked, willing his voice not to crack.

Jack smiled tentatively at the old pet name with his mouth, but the rest of his face was still wrought with grief and a deep-rooted seed of hatred that had been buried and allowed to grow for too long. Nevertheless, he inhaled deeply and nodded.

Gabriel laughed noiselessly, all relief and exhaustion. “Let’s go home, Jack.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like Gabriel starting calling Jack “sunshine” as a joke when Jack was being Extra Salty back in the day. Eventually it morphed into more of an affectionate tease.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick warning, there's some more gore right here at the top of the chapter so I'd just skip through all the italics if you're super squeamish.

_It was quiet, but for the crickets. The sky was a black dome above him, dotted with stars and dizzying in its incomprehensible enormity._

_He never heard a thing. One moment he was tracing constellations with his eyes, the next he was reeling back as a bullet cleaved its way through his face, intimately aware of the impact spreading across his skull in slow-motion, the jagged cracks that stretched out like spider webs, snapping apart and shattering bone piece by piece. The sky didn’t move. He could_ feel _his brain as it turned to pulp inside his head, the way it blended with his blood and leaked out of his temple._

_Silence. The cloying mess of gore pooled under him, thick and hot. His body was cold. All of the warmth, the life, inside him was oozing out between the fragments of his skull still held loosely together by his skin._

_He could feel panic in his gut, a swarming coil of concentrated terror, but it was heavy, pinning him in place instead of stirring him to action. He was aware of his lungs frantically trying to pump oxygen into his veins, but it was useless when all his blood was spilling out onto the ground beneath him._

_The silence was claustrophobic. He wanted to scream but his throat was collapsing. The black of the sky was closer than ever. His world was spinning but the sky remained steady. Then it was upon him and he was consumed by the darkness._

Jack awoke with a startled gasp of air. He couldn’t see and he didn’t know where he was for a moment. Disoriented, he patted the bed around him but he was alone. Gabriel, where was Gabriel-

He found the warm patch of sheets where Gabriel had been the night before and heard the muffled clinking of dishes on the other side of the wall. Gabriel had just woken up first and gone to make breakfast, Jack realized. He crawled over and curled up in Gabriel’s spot while he waited for his breathing to settle, taking comfort in the familiar scent of Gabriel’s pillow and the quiet humming from the kitchen.

He hadn’t known what to think about Gabriel’s stories of an alternate timeline at first but he couldn’t deny the harsh truth of his dreams. They didn’t come for him _every_ night, but it was often enough to make him hesitate when he closed his eyes to sleep. The sensations were too specific, too intense to be mere creations of his imagination.

Sometimes it was like the one he had just woken from, the experience of the bullet liquefying the inside of his head in nauseating detail. Those ones were never physically painful, despite the brutality, and instead induced a deep, primal sense of panic that was difficult to shake afterwards.

Sometimes he was the shooter, his whole body numb as he mechanically lined up the crosshairs of his rifle and pulled the trigger. He always had a moment of distant satisfaction as he watched the small explosion of blood. Then came the agony of every cell inside him fighting the paradox of his existence, overwhelming everything. Upon waking, the phantom pain of it always persisted for varying amounts of time, which could range from minutes to the entire day.

Sometimes he was a ghost, trapped in the vertigo between the two. He could never fully remember those nights. They soothed him into consciousness in the morning, leaving him with only hazy anxiety about having forgotten something. Perhaps it was for the best. Humans were not meant to know what it was like to exist outside of reality.

When his pulse had more or less returned to normal, Jack fumbled for his glasses on the nightstand – a pair that Winston had specially made for him to wear as a replacement for his visor in casual settings. They didn’t have all the hardware and fancy functions of his visor, but they were suitable enough for his daily life. He slipped them on and padded out of the bedroom to find Gabriel mixing pancake batter at the kitchen counter. He was still in his plush penguin pajamas pants, but had gone to the effort of throwing his second favorite hoodie on over top.

Jack might have been responsible for taking his first favorite hoodie.

Gabriel was grinning as he looked up. “Good morning, sweetheart…” He trailed off, the smile morphing into concern as he set the mixing bowl down and walked around the counter to meet Jack in a loose embrace. “Nightmare?” he asked.

“Yeah. No pain though.” Jack burrowed his hands in the back of Gabriel’s hoodie and leaned in for a short kiss.

Gabriel made a show of wrinkling his nose and sticking his tongue out when they parted. “Yick, go brush your teeth. Your mouth tastes awful.”

Jack’s lips quirked up in the semblance of a smile. “I come to my husband for comfort and he rejects me? Should I be thinking about a divorce?”

Gabriel laughed at that. He kissed Jack’s cheek and then nudged him at the waist. “Come on, go brush. Your teeth are gonna fall out, and then I’m really not gonna wanna kiss you.” He hummed. “Then again, you wouldn’t be able to complain as much, so maybe it’s a plus.”

“Please,” Jack grunted as he reluctantly left Gabriel’s arms and turned towards the bathroom. “I’d just kick you instead.”

“You already do that,” Gabriel called, having returned to his pancake batter.

A few short minutes later, they were huddled together on the couch with plates full of pancakes and hot mugs of coffee. Gabriel sat on the end and turned the television onto reruns of Law & Order with the volume down low. Jack pressed into Gabriel’s side, pulling his legs up close.

“This is a two-person couch, you know,” Gabriel said. “There’s plenty of room to spread out.”

Jack just made a non-committal noise in his throat and took a sip of his coffee.

Gabriel sighed dramatically. “Okay, I’ll eat my breakfast with one hand then.” As he wrestled with trying to cut his pancakes with his fork, he said, “By the way, Zenyatta called while you were still sleeping. He wanted to know if you could reschedule your appointment today for 3:00.”

Jack exhaled through his nose. “Hanzo asked for an emergency session again?”

“Probably.”

“Fine.” He tipped his head into the crook of Gabriel’s neck. “More time with you, I guess.”

“You _guess_?” Gabriel set his fork down so he could put his hand to his heart, feigning insult. “My own husband doesn’t want to spend quality time with me? Maybe _I’m_ the one who should be thinking about divorce.”

Jack snickered into his mug and gave Gabriel a playful shove with his shoulder. “Pipe down, old man.”

When they had finished eating, Gabriel pushed Jack off with a muttered, “Move over.”

Jack growled in annoyance but moved over to the other end of the couch. Gabriel flashed a smile and lay down on his side across the cushions, closing his eyes as he pillowed his head in Jack’s lap.

“We _just_ got up, Gabe,” Jack said. “Isn’t it a little early to be taking a nap?”

“Maybe _you_ did,” Gabriel replied sleepily. “I’ve been awake for hours. I just didn’t get out of bed until a reasonable time.”

Jack smoothed his hand over the side of Gabriel’s head, running his fingers through the slowly graying curls of Gabriel’s hair. “It’s about time for a haircut for you.”

“Mm.”

“And your beard could use a trim.”

“Mm…”

It wasn’t long before Gabriel was snoring softly. Jack tried to pay attention to the episode of Law & Order for a little while, but he eventually gave up in favor of tracing and retracing every line and scar on Gabriel’s face. Gabriel twitched, and then turned onto his back. The muscles around his eyebrows were creased slightly, but overall he looked relaxed. At ease. _Happy_.

Jack’s chest felt tight. He was here, sitting in his apartment with his husband, wasting time watching television and eating home-cooked meals together. Neither of them could sleep through the night without a catch and they were both battling their fill of daily anxieties and depressive episodes. But they were fighting, and they were fighting together.

Jack remembered the smell of blood, the feeling of it sticking in his hair and clinging in thick globs to his skin as it flowed from his head. He dropped forward, touching his forehead to Gabriel’s. He was here. They were both here because this stubborn man loved him so much that he grappled with the universe and won.

Gabriel’s eyes blinked open and the gentle line of his lips turned down in a frown. “What’s wrong, sunshine? You look like you’re gonna cry.”

Jack wiped the burgeoning tears away and shook his head. “Nothing,” he assured Gabriel. He tried a smile, and was surprised when it came easily. “Nothing at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the part where I thank everyone!
> 
> FIRST AND FOREMOST, I want to thank my best friend @themetamew for getting this story started! If it wasn't for their help brainstorming the plot and giving general motivation along the way, I wouldn't have ever started this story, let alone finish it. I also want to thank SuspiciousPopsicle for helping me revise and giving me advice whenever I got stuck. Once again, probably wouldn't have been able to finish without you.
> 
> AND OF COURSE thank you all for reading and commenting! I've only ever written stories for fandoms that no one cared about before so the only people who read my stuff were my friends. I've never had the experience of lots of people not just reading, but actually commenting on my work. It was really exciting and I just want to express how happy this whole experience made me.
> 
> Finally, this may not be the end! I was thinking about some possible NSFW scenes that I ended up not putting into the story itself because it didn't really work with the flow. But I may end up writing them and publishing them separately as part of the same series. Even if I don't, I'll almost definitely be writing more for this pairing so stick around :)
> 
> And, as always, feel free to hit me up on twitter or tumblr! I'm always firesonic152 :D


End file.
